Egyptian

Gods
A Captivating Guide to Atum, Horus, Seth, Isis, Anubis,
Ra, Thoth, Sekhmet, Geb, Hathor and Other Gods and
Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
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Table of Contents
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Introduction
Timeline of Ancient Egypt
Amen (Amun, Amon, Ammon)
Anubis (Anpu, Inpw)
Aten (Aton)
Atum (Tum, Tem, Atem, Temu)
Bastet (Bast, Boubastis, Pasht)
The Book of the Dead and Other Funerary Texts
The Four Sons of Horus
Geb (Seb, Keb, Kebb, Gebb)
Hapy (2; also Hapi)
Hathor
Horus (Hor, Her, Heru, Har)
Imhotep (Imouthes)
Isis
Khnum (Chnum)
Khonsu (Khons, Chons)
Maat (Ma’at, Ma’et, Mayet)
Nefertem (Nefertum)
Neith (Neit)
Nephthys (Nebt-het)
Nun (Noun, Nu)
The Ogdoad of Hermopolis
Osiris
Ptah
Ra (Re, Pre)
Serapis (Sarapis, Userhapi)
Set (Seth, Sutekh)
Sobek (Suchos)
Thoth
The Tuat (Duat)
Bibliography
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Introduction
It is tempting to see ancient Egyptian religion as something relatively static, with
a single pantheon whose nature and activities did not change throughout the
three-thousand-year span of the Dynastic Period. However, nothing could be
further from the truth. Throughout Egyptian history, we see that gods who had
once been favored were set aside or had their roles altered in order to make way
for gods whose cults became more popular, while political changes, such as the
conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, ushered in cultural and religious
exchanges that both affected native Egyptian religious practices and also had an
impact on the religious beliefs of Greece and Rome.
Fluidity was built into the structure of Egyptian religion itself. Many gods and
goddesses had special relationships with other deities, often taking on aspects of
those gods, such that a new, syncretized deity was created. We see this
especially with the god Amen and the goddess Bastet. Amen’s association with
the sun god, Ra, created the syncretized deity Amen-Ra, and in this guise, Amen
became the supreme deity of Egypt during the New Kingdom. Bastet, on the
other hand, was not combined with a second deity but rather was seen to be the
calm, affectionate avatar of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, who once went on
a rampage and tried to kill all humankind. Sekhmet, in turn, was considered to
be a violent manifestation of the cow-headed goddess, Hathor.
Syncretization was not the only way in which relationships were established or
changed between and among Egyptian deities. For example, it sometimes can be
difficult to establish which deity was the consort or child of which other god or
goddess, since these groupings could shift depending on location and time
period. For example, the god Khnum, who had his major cult centers in southern
Egypt near the source of the Nile, was variously made the husband of the
goddesses Satis, Menhit, and Neith, while the god Khonsu was worshiped as the
son of Amen and Mut in southern Egypt, as the son of Ptah and Sekhmet in the
north, or as the son of Hathor and Sobek in the Temple of Kom Ombo in central
Egypt.
The importance of the family bond to ancient Egyptians is reflected in their
preference for making collections of deities that represent family groupings. For
example, the Heliopolitan Ennead (Nine Gods) represented four generations of
the same family. More commonly, however, these groupings were of a single
nuclear family of two parents and one child, usually referred to as a “triad.”
Although a temple might be dedicated to a single god such as Horus, that temple
did not neglect to include both the god’s consort and son or daughter although,
as mentioned above, exactly which deities were grouped into which triads might
vary depending on the historical period and location.
There are multiple ancient Egyptian creation myths, and which creation story a
particular person accepted as true might depend on where they were from. For
example, the major religious centers of Hermopolis, Thebes, and Memphis each
had their own creation myth, and although some deities, such as Thoth, cross
over from one cosmogony to the other, these tales are largely independent of one
another. The three cities mentioned above were all large and important, but
status was not necessary in order for a place to have its own creator god and
creation myth. We see this with the ram-headed god Khnum, whose main cult
centers were far from the seats of power, and who was considered to be the
creator of the universe by the people who worshiped him in his shrines on the
island of Elephantine and at Esna.
Because the pharaohs were deemed to be the sons of a deity (variously Horus the
Younger or Amen-Ra, depending on the historical period), Egyptian religion was
closely allied with politics. The pharaoh had the power to create and endow
temples for the worship of the gods, and a pharaoh’s particular religious
enthusiasms could cause shifts in national religious beliefs and practices. We see
these kinds of changes especially during the New Kingdom. For example, when
Pharaoh Ahmose I defeated the invading Hyksos, who had taken over Egypt, he
claimed that his victory was the result of Amen’s favor. Pharaohs thereafter
declared themselves the sons of Amen-Ra. This caused a surge in the popularity
of Amen’s cult, for which the vast temple complex at Karnak was constructed.
Similarly, during the reign of the Ptolemies, interest in the goddess Isis increased
the number of devotees to her cult, which spread beyond the boundaries of Egypt
into Greece and Rome.
Pharaohs could also change (or at least attempt to change) religious practice by
fiat. Pharaoh Akhenaten is perhaps the best known for this, having declared
traditional worship banned in favor of his own monotheistic system that centered
on the sun god Aten. Akhenaten’s heresy was heavily resented by his people and
did not outlast his own regime; his reforms were reversed by his son,
Tutankhamun.
Changes instituted by other monarchs had considerably more staying power,
however. This was particularly true of Ptolemy I’s creation of the new deity
Serapis. Serapis was considered to be the consort of Isis and was a syncretization
of the god Osiris and the Apis bull. He had some Greek characteristics and was
an attempt on the part of the Greek pharaoh to create commonalities between
Greeks and Egyptians living under his rule.
Because the Egyptian pantheon is vast, even if one leaves out the syncretized
deities, it is not possible for this volume to present a comprehensive overview of
ancient Egyptian religion and myth. Instead, only a select number of deities and
concepts are discussed here. Some of these are more well-known deities, while
others might not be as familiar to modern readers. However, this book still offers
a fascinating glimpse into ancient Egyptian religion and culture and the richness
that was life in ancient Egypt.
Timeline of Ancient Egypt
This brief timeline of the history of ancient Egypt includes notes on historical
characters that are either well known or are mentioned in the text. Dates are
regnal dates unless otherwise noted.
Amen (Amun, Amon, Ammon)
Amen is an excellent example of the complexities of Egyptian religion, in the
ways that religion changed across time, in how it was tied to local practice, and
the ways in which it intersected with and was affected by politics in the Dynastic
Period. Amen’s two earliest manifestations were at Thebes and Hermopolis. In
Thebes, Amen functioned as the main creator god of the city, having supplanted
an earlier god named Montu, while in Hermopolis, he was one of the eight
deities of the Ogdoad, a collection of four male and four female deities who
created the universe and who were considered to be personifications of various
important abstract concepts such as darkness or infinity. In Hermopolis, Amen,
along with his consort Amaunet, was considered to be the personification of
hiddenness, since his name literally means “hidden one” or “invisible.” As such,
he was associated with air and the wind.
There are several versions of the Hermopolitan creation myth, which is
discussed in the chapter on the Ogdoad below. The Theban cosmogony makes
use of the theme of the cosmic egg, which it has in common with some versions
of the Hermopolitan myth. In the Theban myth, Amen hatches uncreated out of
an egg that sits on the primeval mound; after this happens, he goes on to create
the rest of the world. Thebes proudly asserted that the city was built on this
primeval mound, thus asserting itself as the center of creation and the place of
Amen’s first emergence into being.
In Thebes, Amen became combined with the solar deity Ra, creating one all-
powerful god called Amen-Ra. Other syncretizations of Amen joined him with
Min, the god of fertility and virility, and with Ptah, another creator god whose
main cult center was in Memphis. However, it was as Amen-Ra in the city of
Thebes that Amen gained his greatest importance, both in terms of religious
worship and in his connections to Egyptian political power.
Amen gained prestige and importance, and as Amen-Ra, he eventually became
the principal god of Egypt during the New Kingdom. One reason for Amen’s
ascendancy from a secondary, local god of the city of Thebes to a national, all-
powerful deity was the defeat of the Hyksos by Ahmose I. The Hyksos were
immigrants to Egypt who gradually were able to seize considerable political
power, especially in the southern part of the country, where Thebes is located.
The period of Hyksos rule is known as the Second Intermediate Period. When
Ahmose I defeated the Hyksos and drove them out of Egypt, he claimed that his
victory was due to the favor of Amen, giving Amen a considerable boost in
popularity and power, allowing Amen to supplant Montu, a war god who had
been the main deity of Thebes up to that point.
As a national deity, Amen was said to be the husband of Mut, a sky goddess, and
the father of Khonsu, the god of the moon. Together, these three deities were
known as the Theban Triad, and they were worshiped at the massive temple
complex at Karnak, one of the largest and most elaborate ancient Egyptian
religious centers.
The newly syncretized god of Thebes, Amen-Ra, was given the role of father of
the pharaoh, a shift from earlier times when the pharaoh was thought to be the
son of Horus. Historian Samuel Kramer notes that, in this guise, Amen-Ra began
to take on many of the characteristics now generally associated with the concept
of God as elucidated in the Bible. [1] Like God, Amen-Ra was seen as an
uncreated being who, through his own unlimited power, created the universe.
Amen-Ra also subjugated the other gods under his power, was invisible and
everywhere, and was able to manifest himself in various ways to humankind.
We see this concept of Amen-Ra as the all-powerful and one true god in a hymn
written for Pinedjem II, the high priest of Amen-Ra from 990 to 969 BCE:
This venerable god, Lord of all Gods, Amon-Re, Lord
of the Throne(s) of the Two Lands, He who resides in
He who Reckons the Thrones.
Venerable manifestation which came into being in the
beginning, Great God who lives on Truth, first Primeval
One who engendered the primeval gods, out of whom
all the other gods came into being.
The Unique One, who created what exists at the first
beginning of the earth. Mysterious of births, of
numerous appearances, whose manifestations are not
known.
Venerable Power, beloved and feared, rich of
appearances, Lord of Might, creative power, out of
whose form came into being every form, he who came
first into being, besides whom nothing exists.
He who gave light to the earth, for the first time with
the disk. Light, Radiating One, when he appears, men
live. When he sails the sky, he is not weary, early in the
morning his work is already fixed. [2]
Although we can see how the character of Amen-Ra resonates with that of the
biblical God in this hymn, we can also see some of the ways that Amen-Ra
remains distinct. Amen-Ra may have been the supreme god of the Egyptians, but
he was not the sole god, and his aspect as the god of the sun remains intact, as
we see in the last verse, which refers specifically to the rising of the sun (“the
disk”) and its course across the sky during the day.
As the supreme god of Egypt, Amen-Ra was given pride of place through the
construction of the great temple complex at Karnak. Although construction of
the temple complex began in the Middle Kingdom during the reign of Senusret I,
the bulk of it was built during the New Kingdom by Pharaoh Amenhotep III.
The temple of Amen at Karnak is considered to be one of the largest religious
structures in the world, and its hypostyle hall (an unroofed area made of multiple
colossal pillars) and the giant, hieroglyphic-encrusted papyrus columns leading
up to the entrance are images immediately recognizable to many people today.
This elevation of Amen-Ra to supreme god had political repercussions, both
through the more widespread worship of Amen-Ra and through the symbol of
his cult’s visible temporal power at Karnak. Although many other temples to
Amen-Ra were constructed at this time, the magnificence and sheer size of the
Karnak temple gave it considerable status. The other factor in the cult’s political
ascendency was the alliance of the priesthood of Amen-Ra with the monarchy.
This alliance began with the defeat of the Hyksos. As Samuel Kramer observes,
when Ahmose I attributed his victory to Amen, he effectively shackled himself
and his successors with a debt of gratitude that was expressed through the
granting of land, treasure, and slaves to the priesthood of Amen as tangible signs
of the king’s thanks for Amen’s protection. [3] As with so many endeavors that
seem like a good idea at the time, the enrichment of the priesthood of Amen-Ra
eventually proved disastrous for the pharaohs, because it siphoned power away
from the monarchy and gave it to the priests. The Amen-Ra priesthood
effectively became kingmakers because, as Kramer reports,
the god’s role as father of the king gave the priests
considerable strength in selecting and supporting a particular
candidate for the kingship…. Thus, by expressing or
withholding divine approval, the priests of Amon-Re’ [sic ]
could ensure their candidate was successful. [4]
Through their vast wealth and religious control over who might legitimately sit
on the throne, the priesthood of Amen functioned in many ways as the de facto
rulers of Egypt by the time of Amenhotep III.
However, it was not only the male heirs to the throne who claimed to be the
children of Amen-Ra. When Queen Hatshepsut assumed the title of pharaoh
upon the death of her husband, Thutmose II, she had an official myth created
that claimed her birth to be ordained by none other than Amen-Ra himself. In the
myth, Amen-Ra tells the assembled company of the gods that he wants to make
a queen to rule over all of Egypt. He sends out Thoth to find a woman to be the
mother of this great queen, and when she is located, Amen-Ra impregnates her,
and thus Hatshepsut is conceived. But Amen-Ra isn’t done; he commissions the
god Khnum, the ram-headed god of the Nile floods, to make Hatshepsut’s body
and soul on his potter’s wheel. In this project, Khnum is helped by the goddess
Hekt, a fertility goddess also associated with the flooding of the Nile. Thus, not
only was Hatshepsut the daughter of Amen-Ra, but her very body and soul were
created by the gods at Amen-Ra’s command.
Hatshepsut needed this myth in order to promote the legitimacy of her rule,
because she originally took the throne not as the direct heir of the pharaoh but
rather as the dowager queen regent to her infant son, who later became
Thutmose III. In Hatshepsut, we see how a ruler might manipulate the power of
Amen-Ra’s cult in order to further her own political ambitions, which stands in
stark distinction to the situation under later pharaohs, who essentially were under
the thumbs of Amen-Ra’s priests.
Alexander the Great was another ruler who seized upon the popularity of Amen-
Ra in order to legitimize his own rule. When Alexander conquered Egypt in 331
BCE, he claimed that he was the son of Ammon-Zeus, a syncretization of the
Greek supreme god Zeus with the Egyptian Amen. Amen was also adopted by
the Romans as Ammon-Jupiter.
The primary challenge to the power of Amen-Ra and his priests came during the
rule of Amenhotep IV. Sometimes known as the “heretic king,” Amenhotep
changed his name to Akhenaten in the fifth year of his reign and began a series
of sweeping religious reforms intended to shift all worship to a single solar deity,
Aten. Akhenaten’s reforms are discussed in detail in the chapter on Aten below.
The national worship of Amen was weakened somewhat because of Akhenaten’s
reforms, and it further waned during the tenth century BCE, although his cult
remained important in Thebes. Amen was eclipsed particularly during the
Ptolemaic Period, when Isis and Serapis became a central focus of worship not
only in Egypt but also in many communities in Greece and Rome. Amen’s cult
was not erased entirely until Christianity was established as a state religion in the
mid-fifth century CE.
Anubis (Anpu, Inpw)
With his black jackal’s head perched upon a man’s body, Anubis is one of the
most easily identified ancient Egyptian deities. Some depictions of this god show
him holding the ankh, or symbol of life, in one hand and a staff in the other,
while other images show him tending to the dead body of a pharaoh. This
association with death and decay is one of Anubis’s chief characteristics. Indeed,
his name in Egyptian, Anpu , literally means “decay” (“Anubis” is the Greek
form of the name), and it is possible that the use of the jackal’s head as one of
the attributes of this god may be a reference to the tendency of jackals to
scavenge in cemeteries and other places where dead bodies are found.
Although Anubis was always considered to be a god of death and the dead, his
position within Egyptian religion altered over time. During the First Dynasty,
Anubis was the primary god of the dead, but this changed during the Middle
Kingdom, when the cult of Osiris gained popularity and Osiris was elevated to
the supreme god of the dead and lord of the Tuat, the ancient Egyptian
Underworld. Anubis may have lost his throne to Osiris, but he did not lose his
importance; instead, his role shifted from ruler of the dead to embalmer and
judge.
The myths surrounding Anubis’s origins and parentage also changed over time.
In some early myths, Anubis is said to be the son of the sun god Ra and the
brother of Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Set, either by the sky goddess Nut or the
cow-headed goddess Hesat. In later myths, he is considered to be the son of
Nephthys, who tricked Osiris into having intercourse with her. This shift likely
had to do with the increasing importance of the Osiris cult and the need to
incorporate Anubis into a new mythical and religious framework that centered
on Osiris, rather than Anubis, as the god of the dead.
One of Anubis’s chief duties in the Tuat was the judging of souls to see whether
or not they were worthy of eternal life. When the soul of a deceased person came
before Anubis, Anubis weighed their heart against the feather of truth. The
deceased person then had to vow that they had lived a good life full of good
deeds. If the person was telling the truth, the heart would weigh less than the
feather, and the person would be allowed into the delights of the afterlife. If the
person was lying, however, the heart would weigh more than the feather, and the
person would be condemned to obliteration by being devoured by Ammit, a
goddess with the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion, and the
hindquarters of a hippopotamus.
Anubis was also the god of embalming, a role that became important after the
rise of the Osiris cult. When Isis finds Osiris’s dead body, Anubis helps her
embalm it and wrap it in linen wrappings. The other part of the embalming
process was the preservation of the stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver, which
were placed into jars made of earthenware, alabaster, or other hard, non-porous
materials. These jars sometimes had stoppers carved or molded into the likeness
of gods who had the responsibility for looking after these organs, which the
deceased person was believed to get back after death. This tradition of
preserving the organs also comes from the Osiris myth, since Anubis was given
Osiris’s organs after Osiris died.
As with several other gods in the Egyptian pantheon, Anubis became absorbed
into Greco-Roman religious practices during the Ptolemaic Period. Anubis was
often syncretized with the Greek god Hermes, who had the task of conducting
souls to Hades. In this way, Anubis gained a function as a guide of souls in
addition to his other duties as embalmer, judge of the dead, and protector of
tombs and cemeteries.
Ancient Egyptian writings that mention Anubis include the Pyramid Texts,
which are inscriptions inside a series of Old Kingdom pyramids that were built
for five pharaohs and some of their wives. These texts, which preserve spells and
prayers intended to raise the occupant of the tomb from the dead and guide them
to eternal life, place Anubis in various roles with respect to the deceased. Some
of the spells suggest that the dead person would themselves become Anubis in
some way, while others refer to the god’s duties as embalmer and the guide and
transformer of souls. Below are some examples from the tomb of Pharaoh Pepi I:
Awake for Horus, stand up against Seth! Raise yourself
as Osiris, as the akh [soul] who is Geb’s first son, and
take up your position as Anubis on the shrine. [5]
So, [Pepi] will go forth to the sky, his wingtips those of
a big bird. His entrails have been washed by Anubis,
and Horus’s service in Abydos—Osiris’s purification—
has been performed. [6]
Anubis, foremost of the god’s booth, has commanded
that you descend as a star, as the morning god. [7]
Your akh is about [you, father Osiris Pepi], as a king-
given offering that shall exist for you as one that
Anubis made for you. [8]
In these texts, it is Anubis himself who embalms the pharaoh and who
transforms him into a divine being, a process that includes the pharaoh taking on
the identity of Anubis for himself. The last section of the text also suggests that
the soul of the pharaoh—likely in its resurrected state—is something created
specifically for the pharaoh by Anubis.
Anubis had a presence and a function outside of funerary texts and royal burials,
however. “The Tale of Two Brothers,” an Egyptian folktale from the New
Kingdom, tells the story of Anubis and Bata, brothers who initially live in the
same household together, along with Anubis’s wife. In this story, Bata acts as a
herdsman and worker on Anubis’s land. All goes well until Anubis’s wife tries
to seduce Bata. When Bata refuses her advances, she pretends that he has
assaulted her. Anubis initially believes his wife’s story, and Bata barely escapes
with his life. As part of his oath to Anubis that he is telling the truth, Bata cuts
off his penis and throws it into the river. He then runs into the wilderness, where
he builds a house for himself. He places his heart at the top of an acacia tree that
grows nearby.
The gods see that Bata is living alone and so provide a wife for him. Bata tells
her not to leave the house, because the sea desires her and will snatch her away.
When the wife disobeys Bata, the sea tries to abduct her, but the woman runs too
fast and manages to get safely back into the house. As the woman is running
away, the sea tells the acacia tree to grab her, but the tree only manages to get a
lock of her hair, which falls into the water.
The hair floats down the river to the place where the pharaoh’s launderers are
doing the wash. The pharaoh’s clothing picks up the scent of Bata’s wife’s
perfume, and the pharaoh commands the woman to be brought to him. When she
arrives, she becomes the pharaoh’s wife, and she soon tells the pharaoh about the
acacia tree that holds Bata’s heart. The pharaoh commands that the tree be
destroyed. Cutting down the tree kills Bata.
Anubis is alerted to Bata’s death by certain signs. Anubis then goes looking for
his brother and finds Bata’s dead body on the bed inside his house. Bata had told
Anubis that his heart was to be stored outside of his body, so Anubis goes
looking for it. After a long search, he finds the heart and restores it to Bata’s
body, which brings Bata back to life. Bata then transforms himself into a
magical bull and tells Anubis to ride him to the court of the pharaoh.
Bata’s former wife, who is still living at the royal court as the wife of the
pharaoh, learns that her husband has transformed himself into a bull and means
to get revenge on her, so she arranges for the bull to be sacrificed and cut into
pieces. However, her plans are foiled when two drops of the bull’s blood land
outside the doors of the temple. From this blood, two trees sprout up, one of
which accuses the woman of treachery as she sits in its shade.
Bata’s former wife arranges for the trees to be cut down and chopped up, but a
splinter from the tree that spoke to her goes into her mouth and impregnates her.
For a second time, Bata is brought back from the dead, for the infant borne by
Bata’s former wife is Bata himself, who goes on to become pharaoh. The story
ends with Bata pronouncing judgment on his former wife and making Anubis his
heir.
Although Bata was a New Kingdom god in his own right, it is easy to see the
parallels between his story and the myth of the dying and rising Osiris, as well as
between the role of Anubis in this story and his functions elsewhere in Egyptian
myth. Bata clearly plays the role of Osiris; his severed penis ends up in a river,
and he is brought back to life after having died through the ministrations of
Anubis. Like Osiris, Bata becomes imprisoned in the wood of a tree, and he later
is restored to full life a second time, after which he comes into his power as the
lord of the land.
Just as the adventures of Bata represent the journey of Osiris from life to death
to resurrection to kingship, so, too, does Anubis maintain his traditional funerary
role in this tale. It is Anubis’s duty to find and tend to the body of the dead Bata
and to restore him to life through his magic by placing Bata’s heart back in his
body. This parallels Anubis’s work in helping to embalm the dead Osiris, thus
restoring him to life. Anubis also acts as a sort of guide for Bata when Bata takes
on the form of a bull, and when Bata enters into his authority as pharaoh, Anubis
is given an important role as the crown prince of the realm, just as Anubis was
given important authority in the Tuat under the kingship of Osiris.
Anubis’s association with death and judgment, as well as the imposing image of
his black jackal’s head and muscular body, often lead modern people to see him
as a fearsome and potentially violent god. However, as we have seen, ancient
Egyptian people did not view Anubis that way. For the ancient Egyptians,
Anubis was a god who tenderly cared for the dead and whose gifts and power
allowed the souls of the just to enter eternal life.
Aten (Aton)
The god Aten was identified with the sun disk and was considered to be a creator
god who made all things and who sustained the universe by his power. Because
the Egyptian word “aten” means “disk,” this god is sometimes referred to as “the
Aten,” or “the sun disk.” The earliest depictions of the Aten show it as a man
with a falcon’s head, but eventually the Aten came to be depicted as the sun
giving off many rays or as a disk with outstretched wings. These depictions
reflect the understanding of Aten as a god of light who is everywhere, who
cannot be defined by a particular form, and whose ba , or spiritual essence,
cannot be represented by an earthly animal.
Worship of Aten is most commonly associated with the reign of Pharaoh
Amenhotep IV, who took the name Akhenaten and who attempted to elevate the
Aten cult above all others. However, worship of the sun disk as an all-powerful
god actually began before Akhenaten took the throne. As Egyptologist George
Hart states, “The worship of Aten was not a sudden innovation on the part of one
king, but the climax of a religious quest among Egyptians for a benign god
limitless in power and manifest in all countries and all natural phenomena.” [9]
Akhenaten’s royal transference of the worship of Amen-Ra to the worship of
Aten, not only as the primary deity but as the sole god of Egypt, had some of its
roots in religious and political changes that had taken place hundreds of years
earlier, with Ahmose I’s defeat of the Hyksos and the elevation of the cult of
Amen-Ra, which in turn greatly increased the power of Amen-Ra’s priests.
Declaring a different god to be both supreme and the primary patron of the
pharaoh had the effect of gutting the authority of Amen-Ra’s priesthood and
restoring to the pharaohs some of their lost power.
The earliest mention of the Aten as a divine concept, if not a separate deity in its
own right, extends back to the Middle Kingdom. We find this in an ancient
Egyptian tale known as “The Story of Sinuhe,” a first-person narrative
purportedly written by a highly placed official at the court of the pharaoh. Early
in the narrative, Sinuhe announces the death of the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh
Amenemhet I, who died in 1955 BCE. Sinuhe says, “He [the pharaoh]
penetrated the sky, being joined to the sun disk [the Aten], the God’s body being
mixed with that of him who made him.” [10]
Increasing reverence for the Aten as a separate divine being, rather than as a
divine concept or avatar of the sun god Ra, is a phenomenon of the early New
Kingdom. Thutmose IV evidently saw the Aten as a god in its own right, since
“[d]uring his rule an historical text on the underside of a scarab mentions Aten in
the vanguard of the pharaoh’s army in battle—a role commonly given to Amun.”
[11]
Thutmose’s successor, Amenhotep III (Akhenaten’s father), seems to have
had a personal devotion to the Aten, although he did not neglect the more
traditional worship of Amen-Ra. Apparently, Amenhotep III saw no
contradictions between his devotion to Amen-Ra and his worship of Aten, since
evidence of his reverence for the former includes construction on the great
temple of Amen-Ra at Karnak. Evidence of his devotion to the latter includes
authorizing construction of a temple to the Aten in Heliopolis (literally “City of
the Sun”), taking the name Tekhen-Aten (“Radiance of Aten”) as one of his
many epithets, and naming his royal barge Aten-Tjehen (“Shining Sun Disk”).
It was left to Amenhotep III’s son Amenhotep IV (later Akhenaten) to take the
next steps in the development of the Aten cult. This project began in the fifth
year of Amenhotep IV’s reign. One of his first steps was to change his name
from one meaning “Amen is Pleased” to one meaning “Useful to Aten.” That
move was highly significant in itself, because it took away the focus on
reverence for Amen-Ra as the supreme state god and progenitor of the pharaohs
and instead allied the throne with a relatively new deity whose status paled in
comparison to that of Amen-Ra, in both political and religious terms.
One of Akhenaten’s actions in elevating the cult of the Aten was to move the
royal residence from Thebes to a new city called Akhetaten, which means
“Horizon of the Aten.” Construction of the city began in the fifth year of
Akhenaten’s reign and was completed a few years later. Akhetaten was located
in central Egypt in what is now Amarna, standing about halfway between the
ancient city of Thebes to the south and Memphis to the north at the mouth of the
Nile Delta. Akhetaten boasted two new temples to the Aten, one small and one
large and grand, as well as living quarters for the pharaoh, his family, and his
court. Housing was also provided for various nobles, who thought it wise and
status-raising to live close to the pharaoh, and for the various administrators and
functionaries of both the Egyptian state and the sacred temples to Aten.
Worship of the Aten took place every day. Akhenaten officiated as high priest,
although there were other, lesser priests also dedicated to the service of the Aten.
On some occasions, Queen Nefertiti and other royal women participated in
worship services. Temples to the Aten were different from those dedicated to
other gods in that the Aten’s temples had no roofs, in order that the light of the
sun might shine into the sanctuary.
By Akhenaten’s time, the representation of Aten as having a mixed human-
animal form had long been abandoned in favor of a depiction of the sun and its
rays, a representation that is, in some ways, more abstract than depictions of
other Egyptian deities, since it avoids anthropomorphization in favor of an image
of solar—and, hence, divine—power. We see this in one important relief from
the Great Temple in Akhetaten, which shows Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their
daughter Meritaten holding up fronds of papyrus while offering worship to the
Aten, which is depicted as a disk from which rays pour down onto the pharaoh,
his wife, and his child. Some of the rays end in human hands that are poised in a
gesture of benediction, while other hands hold ankhs, the Egyptian symbol of
life, signifying the lifegiving power of the Aten.
When Akhenaten built his new city and new temples, he intended them to usher
in a new era in which the Aten was not only the supreme god but also the only
god, who was revered both in itself and in its manifestation in the person of the
king. Worship of Amen-Ra was forbidden, as was devotion to Osiris. Temples to
the old gods were closed, and their wealth and income were devoted instead to
the worship of the Aten. Because of this, Akhenaten is sometimes considered to
be an early monotheist, but scholarly opinion is divided over the degree to which
Atenism was, in fact, a monotheistic faith.
In addition to building temples and commissioning artworks that showed
Akhenaten venerating the Aten, Akhenaten also wrote a hymn to the sun. Hymns
to the gods had always been an important part of Egyptian religious practice, so
the writing of a hymn was nothing new in itself. What was new, however, is the
way that Akhenaten describes the Aten and the believer’s relationship to it.
Some scholars have compared Akhenaten’s hymn to Psalm 104, which similarly
praises the God of the Israelites and lists his creative acts. Below are some
excerpts from Akhenaten’s hymn, side by side with the relevant passages of
Psalm 104 from the New International Version:

Akhenaten’s Hymn [12] Psalm 104

You rise in perfection on the horizon The Lord wraps himself in light as
of the sky, with a garment;
living Aten, who determines life. he stretches out the heavens like a tent
Whenever you are risen upon the and lays the beams of his upper
eastern horizon chambers on their waters.
you fill every land with your He makes the clouds his chariot
perfection. and rides on the wings of the wind.
You are appealing, great, sparkling, He makes winds his messengers,
high over every land; flames of fire his servants. (vv. 2–4)
your rays embrace the lands as far as
everything you have made.
everything you have made.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Whenever you set on the western He made the moon to mark the
horizon, seasons,
the land is in darkness in the manner and the sun knows when to go down.
of death. You bring darkness, it becomes night,
They sleep in a bedroom with heads and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
under the covers, The lions roar for their prey
and one eye cannot see another. and seek their food from God. (vv. 19–
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21)
Every lion comes out of his cave and
all the serpents bite,
for darkness is a blanket.
The land is silent now, because He
who makes them
is at rest on His horizon.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The entire land performs its work: How many are your works, Lord!
all the flocks are content with their In wisdom you made them all;
fodder, the earth is full of your creatures.
trees and plants grow, There is the sea, vast and spacious,
birds fly up to their nests, teeming with creatures beyond number
their wings extended in praise for —
your Ka . living things both large and small.
All the kine prance on their feet; There the ships go to and fro,
everything which flies up and and Leviathan, which you formed to
alights, frolic there.
they live when you rise for them. All creatures look to you
The barges sail upstream and to give them their food at the proper
downstream too, time.
for every way is open at your rising. (vv. 24–27)
The fishes in the river leap before
your face
when your rays are inside the sea.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The earth comes forth into existence When you give it to them,
by your hand, they gather it up;
and you make it. when you open your hand,
 and you make it. when you open your hand,
When you rise, they live; they are satisfied with good things.
when you set, they die. When you hide your face,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust. (vv.
28–29)
Akhenaten’s fervent personal devotion to the Aten was not sufficient to bring
about the religious revolution he so desired. Atenism failed to make much
headway among the Egyptian populace, who resented the loss of their traditional
religion and who were grateful when Akhenaten’s heir, Tutankhamen, revived
the worship of Amen-Ra, Osiris, and the other gods who had been revered by
Egyptians for millennia. During this restoration, the old temples were reopened
and the priesthoods restored, and the city of Akhetaten was destroyed by royal
command. Akhenaten was treated as a heretic, and his name erased from
inscriptions.
Modern opinions of Akhenaten are highly variable. Some authors and scholars
have seen him in much the same way as his countrymen apparently did, as a
heretic whose religious fervor bordered on mania. Others, however, have seen
him as a sincere reformer who wished to replace a polytheistic system with one
devoted to a single supreme deity. Those who espouse the latter opinion
sometimes try to align Akhenaten’s faith with Christianity, attempting to show
that Akhenaten was ahead of his time and that his reforms were an improvement.
However, most scholars today agree that comparisons of Atenism with other
monotheistic religions need to be done carefully in order to avoid both the
creation of false parallels between Atenism and other religions and also to steer
clear of the assumption that monotheism is somehow superior to other religious
expressions.
In addition to receiving significant scholarly attention, Pharaoh Akhenaten has
also captured the imagination of modern artists and musicians. One important
artwork is the opera Akhnaten by the American minimalist composer Philip
Glass. Akhnaten was written in 1983, and draws its libretto partly from ancient
Egyptian texts and partly from a set of letters in Akkadian that were found in the
ruins of Akhetaten. Other portions of the libretto are in biblical Hebrew. Each
performance of the opera includes a setting of Akhenaten’s “Hymn to the Sun,”
which is always sung in the language of the audience that is watching at the
time. The action of the opera starts with the funeral of his father, Amenhotep III.
The opera then follows the course of Akhenaten’s life, from his coronation to his
own death and burial.
The 2016 production by the English National Opera, which was revived in 2018
and 2019, included the Gandini juggling troupe. The troupe’s juggling of balls
and clubs of various sizes was intended to be symbolic of some of the themes of
the opera, and was timed to mesh with and represent the flow of the music.
Atum (Tum, Tem, Atem, Temu)
One of the primary creator gods of ancient Egypt, Atum was said to have
emerged on the primeval mound that sat in the primeval waters, which were
personified as the god Nun. Atum’s name means something like “all” or
“complete.” His first act of creation was to make Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut,
the goddess of light. One version of the story says that Atum made them from
his semen, while another says that Shu was made from Atum’s spittle and that he
vomited Tefnut into existence. From Shu and Tefnut came Geb, the god of the
earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky. Geb and Nut’s children were Isis, Osiris,
Nephthys, and Set. Together, Atum and his descendants are referred to as the
Ennead, the primary deities worshiped in Heliopolis, an ancient city near what is
now Cairo. Egyptologist Stephen Quirke notes that before the New Kingdom,
Atum and the Ennead were more widely considered to be the primary creator
deities throughout Egypt. [13]
Like many other gods, Atum quickly became identified with the sun god Ra, and
he was frequently worshiped as Atum-Ra. However, Atum also had his own
independent role with respect to solar theology. Ancient Egyptians personified
the sun as different deities depending on the time of day. In this system, Atum
was the setting sun, while Ra was the sun at midday and Khepera was the rising
sun.
The connection between Atum and light is clearly drawn in the myth of the Eye
of Ra and the creation of human beings. In this myth, Shu and Tefnut become
separated from Atum in the vastness of Nun, so Atum sends his Eye to look for
them. While the Eye is away, Atum grows a new one. When the first Eye returns
triumphantly with Shu and Tefnut, Atum weeps for joy, and from his tears
human beings are created. The first Eye becomes jealous of the second one, so
Atum gives the first one pride of place by turning it into the sun disk and putting
it on his head.
In addition to his roles as creator and an aspect of the sun, Atum was thought to
sometimes take on the form of an ichneumon (Egyptian mongoose). Author
Margaret R. Bunson states that this was because of the mongoose’s ability to kill
venomous serpents without taking harm and because it ate crocodile eggs. [14]
Bastet (Bast, Boubastis, Pasht)
Goddess of fertility and motherhood, protector of the pharaoh, and identified
with the Eye of Ra, the cat-headed goddess Bastet originally was conceptualized
as a lion-headed deity and often was aligned with Sekhmet, another lion-headed
goddess. In fact, Bastet and Sekhmet sometimes were treated as two different
facets of the same deity. Because of Bastet’s association with Sekhmet, she was
also linked with the cow-headed goddess Hathor, who transformed into Sekhmet
and destroyed humanity at the command of Ra.
In her cat-headed form, Bastet (also known as Bast) is usually portrayed as
having a woman’s body, clothed in a linen sheath dress, and carrying a sistrum
(a type of rattle) and a box or jar. Both the actual meaning and pronunciation of
Bastet’s name remain unclear. Egyptologist Geraldine Pinch has suggested that
it means something like “She of the Ointment Jar,” because Bastet was
associated with ointments and perfumes. [15]
Bastet was venerated in her lion form for the first thousand years of Egyptian
dynastic history. The shift to her cat form occurred sometime during the second
millennium BCE. Pinch notes that the different aspects of Bastet “as nurturing
mother and terrifying avenger” can be found in many different sources. These
include the Pyramid Texts, which date from c. 2400 to 2300 BCE ; the Coffin
Texts, which are protective spells written on the insides of coffins, dating from c.
2181 to 2185 BCE; and in the Book of the Dead , a New Kingdom funerary text
that contains collections of spells and prayers intended to shepherd the soul
through the hazards of the Underworld. [16]
Ideas about Bastet’s character, as depicted in the myths that involve her,
revolved in part around the observed behavior of cats. Bastet was associated
with fertility and motherhood because cats themselves are both very fertile and
also devoted, attentive mothers. The ferocity of the cat, on the other hand, is
shown in a myth in which Bastet helps Ra kill the serpent-demon Apep (also
known as Apophis) by attacking it with her claws. The cat’s independence and
unwillingness to be tamed is reflected in a myth usually referred to as “The
Distant Goddess,” in which Bastet, in her guise as the Eye of Ra and in feline
form, runs away into the desert, and Ra has to send a god (which one varies
depending on the version of the story) to coax her to come back home. Geraldine
Pinch notes that in Ptolemaic Egypt, the return of the Distant Goddess had
importance to the Egyptian calendar and to beliefs about the origin of the Nile
floods, since the goddess’s return home was said to initiate the inundation of the
Nile, which was seen as the beginning of the Egyptian year. [17]
The worship of Bastet was centered in the city of Bubastis, located on the
eastern edge of the Nile Delta, where the goddess had a fine temple. The worship
of Bastet included votive offerings of bronze cat statuettes and actual
mummified cats. The ancient historian Herodotus, who refers to Bastet as the
Roman goddess Diana, thought the Temple of Bastet the most beautiful in
Egypt. [18] In his description of the temple precincts, Herodotus says that two
canals ran from the Nile to the entrance, “one flowing round it on one side, the
other on the other,” and that trees had been planted along the edges of each
canal. [19] In addition, Herodotus says that the temple grounds were surrounded
by a wall “sculptured with figures … and within is a grove of lofty trees, planted
round a large temple.” [20]
Herodotus also wrote a description of the main festival of Bastet, which historian
Lewis Spence says was held in April and May every year. [21] Bastet’s festival
appears to have been one of the most popular feasts in the Egyptian calendar,
drawing up to 700,000 visitors to Bubastis every year, according to Herodotus.
[22]
This festival was an occasion for great rejoicing, celebrated with sacrifices,
processions of barges down the river, music, singing and dancing, and the
consumption of enormous amounts of alcohol. Indeed, Herodotus estimated that
at the festival of Bastet, “more wine is consumed … than in all the rest of the
year.” [23] It is possible that the volume of wine consumed at Bastet’s festival was
related to the myth of Hathor/Sekhmet, in which the goddess’s bloodlust is sated
by beer brewed by Ra, which has been colored to look like blood so that
Hathor/Sekhmet would drink that rather than the blood of the people. The ruse
works; Hathor/Sekhmet drinks until she is senseless, and after that point she has
no more desire to kill.
The Book of the Dead and Other Funerary Texts
Since the Old Kingdom, it had been an Egyptian funerary tradition to write
prayers and spells on the walls of the tombs of the pharaohs, to give them the
information and power they needed to navigate the dangers of the Tuat and
attain eternal life. In the Middle Kingdom, such texts were written inside the
coffins of the aristocracy, but during the New Kingdom, collections of prayers
and spells began to be produced for any Egyptian person who might have the
money to purchase them. These collections, which were written on papyrus
scrolls and often illustrated, are referred to as the Book of the Dead . The various
versions of the Book of the Dead constitute some of the most important sources
of information about Egyptian myth, cosmology, religion, and funerary
practices.
Although these collections are given a single, unitary title, they are far from
uniform. Some collections are considerably longer and more lavishly illustrated
than others, and it was possible for the person buying one of these books to have
them custom-made by selecting which spells and prayers might be included.
Other versions of the book seem to have been mass-produced, although the name
of the person who bought them could be written inside at the time of purchase.
The Book of the Dead was intended to be buried with the deceased so that they
could use it to deal with any dangers they might encounter when they arrived in
the Tuat. One particularly important section of this book dealt with what one
must do during the ceremony of the weighing of the heart, which would
determine whether the deceased would be allowed to go on to paradise or
whether they would be annihilated forever.
Another funerary text that came into regular use during the New Kingdom was
the Book of the Gates . The Book of the Gates described the twelve sectors of the
Underworld and the journey of the sun from west to east during the night, which
made it similar to the Amduat , another important text. (The Amduat is
summarized in the chapter on the Tuat below.) The sections of the Book of the
Gates are aligned with the twelve hours of the night, and each one is populated
by different collections of deities and other beings who attempt to either help or
hinder Ra on his passage through their territories, a structure shared with the
Amduat .
Each region of the Tuat in the Book of the Gates is described as having a specific
gate with its own specific name, and each gate is guarded by a different serpent.
For example, the gate of the third hour is named “Mistress of Nurturing,” and the
guardian serpent is called “the Stinger,” while the gate of the seventh hour is
called “Gleaming One,” and its guardian serpent is called “Hidden Eye.” [24]
While the Book of the Dead provided protection to the deceased and the Book of
the Gates explained what the Tuat was like, the Book of the Opening of the
Mouth contained detailed instructions for the Rite of the Opening of the Mouth,
an important funerary liturgy that was performed both on statues and on the
mummified remains of deceased persons. Because Egyptian funerary beliefs and
practices included offerings of food and drink to the deceased, the Rite of the
Opening of the Mouth was vital for allowing the dead person to be able to
consume the offerings in the afterlife. Egyptologist Ann Macy Roth has argued
that the procedure used in this ritual was intended to mimic
the birth and maturation of a child. Its purpose was to take the newly
reborn deceased person through the transitions of birth and
childhood, so that he or she could be nourished by the (adult) food
provided in such profusion by Egyptian mortuary cults. The ritual
therefore emphasized the aspects of the process that affected the
way a child receives nourishment: the initial connection with the
placenta, the severing of the umbilical cord, nursing, weaning, and
teething. [25]
The rite could have up to seventy-five sections, but less elaborate versions were
also performed. Special tools and objects used in the ceremony included incense,
ointment, and water, which were all used to purify the statue, and clothing in
which the statue was dressed. One particularly important implement was an adze
or chisel that was used to ritually “open” the mouth of the statue or the deceased
person so that they could breathe, eat, and drink. The Book of the Dead refers to
this aspect of the ceremony in Chapter 23:
My mouth is opened by Ptah,
My mouth’s bonds are loosed by my city-god.
Thoth has come fully equipped with spells,
He looses the bonds of Seth from my mouth.
Atum has given me my hands,
They are placed as guardians.
My mouth is given to me,
My mouth is opened by Ptah
With that chisel of metal
With which he opened the mouth of the gods. [26]
As with other funerary texts, the Book of the Opening of the Mouth contains both
illustrations and text. However, in the Book of the Opening of the Mouth , the
illustrations have a different function than those in the Amduat , for example.
Rather than descriptions of a particular space or collection of deities, the
illustrations in the Book of the Opening of the Mouth accompany the text
explaining how each part of the rite was to be performed. The pictures show who
ought to be doing what, as well as how various items such as water were to be
utilized. [27]
The Four Sons of Horus
The sons of Horus the Elder had several roles within Egyptian religious and
cosmological belief. In terms of cosmology, they were thought to be the four
pillars that held up the sky, and they were often associated with the four cardinal
directions. However, the greater part of their function was in relation to funerary
practices, since they were thought to assist the transit of the soul into the
afterlife. They are often depicted in funerary papyri, and in the Pyramid Texts,
they are called upon to protect and guide the soul of the pharaoh as it enters the
afterlife. Sculpted heads of the sons of Horus sometimes were used as guardians
of the canopic jars used in mummification.
Ancient Egyptian burial practices involved the careful removal of the internal
organs preparatory to embalming the body. The stomach, intestines, lungs, and
liver were each placed in their own special jars, sometimes known as “canopic
jars.” These organs were carefully preserved and buried with the rest of the
body, since the ancient Egyptians believed that the organs would be reunited
with the body in the afterlife. (The heart was left inside the body so that it could
be used in the ceremony of the weighing of the heart.)
The style of the lids for the canopic jars underwent changes as time passed. The
oldest jars have plain lids, while those from the First Intermediate Period are
decorated with human heads. During the New Kingdom, the style changed yet
again, with each lid being fashioned to represent one of the four sons of Horus
the Elder. Each of these gods was associated with a specific protector goddess,
and each had a specific role as a guardian of one of the preserved organs.
Duamutef
Duamutef had the head of a jackal. He was the guardian of the stomach, and
was associated with the east. His guardian goddess was Neith.
Hapy (1; also Hapi)
Hapy had the head of a baboon and protected the lungs. He was associated
with the north, and his guardian goddess was Nephthys. (For the deity of the
same name who was associated with the Nile floods, see Hapy (2) below).
Imsety (Imset, Imseti, Amset, Amsety, Mesti, Mesta)
Associated with the south, Imsety had human form and protected the liver. His
guardian goddess was Isis.
Qebehsenuef (Qebhsenuf)
Qebehsenuef’s guardian was Serket, a goddess of fertility and healing, who
was especially associated with protection against venomous stings and bites.
Qebehsenuef was depicted as having a hawk’s head. He was associated with
the east and protected the intestines.
Geb (Seb, Keb, Kebb, Gebb)
The offspring of Shu and Tefnut, Geb was the god of earth, and his consort was
the sky goddess Nut. Geb was part of the Ennead (Nine Gods) of the city of
Heliopolis, a group of deities that included Geb’s father, wife, and children. In
visual representations, Geb is often depicted together with Shu and Nut. In these
images, Geb lies on the ground, while Nut arches her body over him, with only
her fingers and toes touching him at the ends of his body. Meanwhile, Shu stands
in the middle of Geb’s body, where he holds Nut up with his arms. This
represents the sky arching over the earth, with air both separating the earth from
the sky and also keeping the sky in position.
Like Osiris, Geb was sometimes depicted in myth as a pseudo-historical king of
Egypt. However, unlike Osiris, who is a just and gentle god, Geb is ruthless,
jealous, and violent. In a myth from the Thirtieth Dynasty that is preserved in a
shrine in Phakussa (now Faqus) on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, Geb’s
father Shu holds the throne of Egypt, and has ruled for a very long time. Geb is
jealous of his father’s power and is still angry that Shu separated him from his
beloved wife, Nut. Geb leads a revolt that ousts Shu, after which Geb rapes his
mother, Tefnut. Nine days of howling winds and violent storms follow Geb’s
actions, but when everything dies down, Geb takes the throne and is
acknowledged as the king. When Geb attempts to take his father’s crown, the
uraeus , or cobra, that adorns it spits out venom that burns Geb and kills his
followers. Geb is healed by a lock of Ra’s hair, and he eventually settles down to
become a good ruler. When Geb decides to abdicate, he designates Horus as his
heir in the north and Set as his heir in the south.
Geb was also sometimes identified as the “Great Cackler,” the goose that laid the
primordial egg from which the universe emerged. He is therefore sometimes
depicted with a goose’s head. At other times, he is rendered as a human king,
wearing the combined crown of both Upper and Lower Egypt.
Hapy (2; also Hapi)
Associated with the yearly flooding of the Nile, Hapy was one of the most
revered gods in the Egyptian pantheon. Hapy was said to live variously in the
Underworld or on an island in Elephantine in the First Cataract of the Nile. On
the island, Hapy resided in a grotto that was guarded by the god Khnum.
Hapy wears a man’s kilt and a headdress of papyrus plants. He is usually
represented as an intersex figure, having the beard and hair of a male but the
breasts of a female. He also usually has a pot belly. Hapy is portrayed with
breasts and a belly because he was considered to be a nurturing, nourishing
figure, since life in ancient Egypt was completely dependent on the fecundity
brought by the annual floods. Hapy often has blue or green skin, and in the New
Kingdom he was sometimes portrayed as a pair of identical gods pulling on the
stems of two plants that are entwined together. In this form, Hapy represents the
union of Upper and Lower Egypt.
Hapy was intimately linked with Osiris in the Egyptian religious imagination.
Just as Osiris returned to life after being dead, Hapy revived Egypt every year
with life-giving floodwaters. Osiris was considered to be the god who first
taught people how to grow and harvest grain, and since Hapy’s floods made
agriculture possible, the return of the crops every year was thought to symbolize
the resurrection of Osiris. The harvest that followed the floods therefore was
both a commemoration and renewal of Osiris’s gifts of barley and agriculture. [29]
A surviving hymn to Hapy praises him for his bounty, and it is clear from the
text that the time of the Nile floods was an occasion for celebration in ancient
Egypt. The hymn also makes clear that inundations that were insufficient or
overwhelming might spell disaster, and so Hapy might have a destructive aspect
as well as a nurturing one. Below are some excerpts from this hymn, which dates
from the Middle Kingdom: [30]
Hail to you, Hapy,
Sprung from earth,
Come to nourish Egypt!
Of secret ways,
A darkness by day,
To whom his followers sing!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
When he is sluggish, noses clog,
Everyone is poor;
As the sacred loaves are pared,
A million perish among men.
When he plunders, the whole land rages,
Great and small roar;
People change according to his coming,
When Khnum has fashioned him.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
When he rises at the residence,
Men feast on the meadows’ gifts,
Decked with lotus for the nose,
And all the things that sprout from the earth.
Children’s hands are filled with herbs,
They forget to eat.
Good things are strewn about the houses,
The whole land leaps for joy.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oh joy when you come!
You who feed men and herds
With your meadow gifts!
Oh joy when you come!
Hathor
Hathor is a complex deity who played multiple important roles within Egyptian
religion and culture. She was seen as a nurturing cow-goddess, a patron of
fertility and motherhood. Hathor also had strong associations with music, dance,
drunkenness, and sensuality. As one of the goddesses who represented the Eye
of Ra, Hathor had a terrifying, destructive aspect as well. This dual nature as
nurturing cow and fierce Eye of Ra is often captured in representations of the
goddess, where she is shown as a beautiful woman wearing a headdress of two
long, curving cow horns between which is set the sun disk.
Whether Hathor was worshiped in the Predynastic Period is still an open
question. Egyptologist Carolyn Graves-Brown notes that “[t]he first clear
attestation of Hathor is in the reign of Khafre in the Fourth Dynasty.” [31] Once
the cult of Hathor became established, however, it became immensely popular.
Hathor’s primary cult center was at Dendera in central Egypt, but Graves-Brown
says that “more temples were built to [Hathor] than to any other Egyptian
goddess.” [32]
In addition to serving as the Eye of Ra, Hathor was sometimes considered to be
Ra’s mother and therefore the mother of the pharaoh by extension. This
connection was reinforced by images that showed Hathor nursing the pharaoh.
[33]
The living pharaoh participated in a rite intended to represent him nursing at
Hathor’s breast. In this rite, the pharaoh would drink from the teats of sacred
cows that were kept at the Temple of Hathor. Geraldine Pinch notes that this
activity “was part of the coronation ceremony, and seems to have been regularly
repeated.” [34]
Hathor’s motherly role extended beyond the boundaries of life. She was one of
the goddesses said to live in the Field of Reeds, which was the Egyptian name
for paradise. Just as men were thought to take the name of Osiris upon death, so
too did women take the name of Hathor, although the latter was a relatively late
development. [35] As a goddess of death, Hathor’s duty was to shepherd the soul
into the afterlife and see to the soul’s comfort. We see this in one prayer found
on a cup dating from c. 1550 BCE , where one of the well-wishes for the dead
person is “[m]ay Hathor give you beer.” [36]
It is Hathor who gives the soul beer because of the goddess’s role in the myth of
the destruction of humanity. In the myth, Ra is angry because human beings are
doing evil things and neglecting the worship of the gods. Ra sends Hathor down
to Earth as his Eye to wreak destruction and teach the humans a lesson.
Unfortunately, Hathor becomes so wrapped up in this task that she risks
destroying all humanity, so the other gods beg Ra to restrain her, otherwise no
one will be left to worship them. Ra achieves this by having beer brewed and
then colored red. Hathor, who has taken on the guise of the lion-headed goddess
Sekhmet, thinks the beer is blood, and she drinks so deeply of it that she passes
out drunk. When she wakes up, she is once again restored to her senses.
Beer, drinking, and drunkenness were essential parts of Hathor’s feasts. These
festivals were also occasions for the expression of joy through music and dance.
Hathor was especially associated with the sound of the sistrum, a kind of
metallic rattle, and while dance was part of the worship of many Egyptian gods,
it was especially connected with Hathor. Graves-Brown notes that dance was
sufficiently important to the worship of Hathor that men sometimes danced as
well. And not only that, but there were times when the pharaoh himself danced
for the goddess. [37]
One aspect of Hathor had particular duties regarding newborn children. This
form of Hathor divided her into seven goddesses, and in this form, she visited
newborn children and declared what their fates would be. The Seven Hathors
could also be called upon in matters of love and were thought to offer protection
against demons. [38]
Hathor also participated in the Osiris legend that was central to many Egyptian
religious practices. Some scholars think that an older version of the myth cast
Hathor in the role of wife to Osiris and mother to Horus, a role that was later
taken over by Isis. [39] Hathor plays a different role in a continuation of the Osiris
legend known as “The Battle of Horus and Set,” wherein the young Horus has to
defend his claim to the throne against his evil uncle, the chaos god Set. In this
story, Ra and the other gods act as judges who are attempting to figure out
whether to grant the crown to Horus or Set. At one point, Ra gets so fed up with
the proceedings that he goes into his tent by himself to sulk. The other gods
discuss what might be done to alleviate Ra’s foul mood, and Hathor volunteers
to deal with the problem. She goes into Ra’s tent, where she takes off her
clothes. When Ra sees Hathor’s naked body, his good mood is restored, and he
returns to his rightful place among the gods.
Hathor’s association with Horus continued even after Isis supplanted Hathor as
his mother. In some places, Hathor was considered to be the consort of Horus.
This was true particularly in Edfu, where a fine temple to Horus was built during
the Ptolemaic Period. Egyptologist Rosalie David notes that one annual event at
the temple in Edfu involved taking the statue of Hathor from her temple in
Dendera and sailing it down the river to Edfu, where ceremonies would be held
celebrating the marriage of Hathor and Horus. [40] When the festival was over,
the statue would then be sailed back to Dendera and returned to its shrine.
Horus (Hor, Her, Heru, Har)
Horus is one of the oldest and most complex deities in the Egyptian pantheon
and perhaps is one of the most familiar to modern readers. Horus is usually
pictured as a falcon, or else as a man with a falcon’s head. In either depiction, he
is sometimes seen wearing the pschent crown of a united Upper and Lower
Egypt. At other times, he is shown as a young, winged human boy with his
finger raised to his lips; this version of the god was taken up by the Greeks as
Harpocrates, the god of the keeping of secrets.
From the beginning of Egyptian history, Horus was a god allied with kingship.
The Pre-Dynastic pharaoh Menes, who united Upper and Lower Egypt into a
single country, was especially devoted to Horus, which helped to nationalize
Horus’s cult. However, it was not merely that the king worshiped Horus
fervently that united the god with the throne. One primary tenet of Egyptian
kingship was that the king himself was a god, and that he specifically was a
manifestation or even reincarnation of Horus. This link was cemented when,
upon assuming the throne, the king took a new name that was referred to as his
“Horus name.”
Understanding the nature of Horus is made difficult by the multiplicity of his
manifestations. It is unclear whether these were intended to be avatars of the
same deity, or whether they were, in fact, separate gods entirely. One version of
Horus, often referred to as “Horus the Elder,” was said to be the child of the
earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, making him the brother of Isis, Osiris,
Nephthys, and Set. The second version is usually called “Horus the Younger,”
and in this manifestation, he is the child of Isis and Osiris.
From the earliest times, Horus the Elder was a sky god, whose eyes were the sun
and moon. The antiquity of this association with the sky is noted by Egyptologist
Geraldine Pinch, who observes that “[o]ne of the earliest divine images known
from Egypt is that of a falcon in a barque,” [41] a common ancient Egyptian
depiction of the movement of a heavenly body across the sky, which was
conceived of as a kind of celestial waterway. In later times, Horus became
identified with the sun god Ra, thus assuming a solar aspect himself. Pinch
explains that in this manifestation, he was known as “Ra-Horakhty (Ra-Horus of
the Double Horizon), who triumphed over his enemies to rise in the east.” [42]
Horus the Younger was said to be the child of Isis and Osiris, who was
conceived after his father’s death through a magical act performed by his
mother. In the Osirian myth, Horus is in constant danger from his evil uncle Set,
who kills Horus’s father not once but twice in an effort to usurp his throne. The
manifestation of Horus as the son of Isis and Osiris was commonly co-opted by
Egyptian pharaohs at least by the Fifth Dynasty. These pharaohs considered
themselves to be both the descendants of Horus and a reincarnation thereof. This
association is asserted in the Pyramid Texts, which refer to the pharaoh as Horus
when he is a living man and as Osiris once he has died and entered the afterlife.
In addition to the Osirian tale, the other primary myth involving Horus is “The
Battle of Horus and Set,” a story preserved in a papyrus dating from the
Twentieth Dynasty. In this tale, Set has usurped the throne of Egypt after the
death of Osiris. Horus comes before the supreme god Ra-Horakhty and all the
other gods to demand that he be named Osiris’s rightful heir. The gods argue
back and forth about this. Most of them agree that Horus should be king, but Ra-
Horakhty and a few others think that Set should retain the throne because he is
older and more experienced. The gods ask for advice from Osiris and from the
goddess Neith, both of whom say that Horus should wear the crown.
When the court of the gods fails to reach a consensus, Set suggests a single
combat between himself and Horus, with the victor being made king. In the first
combat, Set and Horus turn themselves into hippopotamuses to see who can
remain under water the longest. Horus’s mother Isis tries to rig the contest by
harpooning Set, but her first cast goes awry, hitting Horus instead. The second
cast hits Set, who rages at his sister for harming him. Isis feels sorry for Set, and
so she removes the harpoon, but this angers Horus, who attacks his mother and
cuts off her head. Horus then runs off into the mountains with Isis’s head, while
her body becomes a headless statue. (Later in the story, Isis revives herself.)
Ra-Horakhty demands that Horus pay for his crime, so he sends various gods out
to find him. Set comes across Horus while he is sleeping and gouges out his
eyes, then denies having seen Horus at all. Horus is later found by Hathor, who
heals him and brings him back home. At this point, Ra-Horakhty is so fed up
with both Set and Horus that he tells them to go home, eat together, and stop
fighting each other.
Set invites Horus home to have a meal with him and to be his guest overnight.
Horus agrees, but once he is asleep, Set attempts to rape him. Horus manages to
fend Set off, but not before Set has ejaculated into his hands. Later, Set tries to
convince the gods that Horus wanted Set to have sex with him and that therefore
he is unclean. However, Set is the one who ends up being shamed when his
semen calls out to the court of the gods from the river, where Isis had cast
Horus’s befouled hands (she makes him new ones afterward), and from inside
Set’s own body, since he had eaten lettuce upon which Isis had secretly poured
some of his seed.
Set then proposes another contest. He and Horus are to make boats of stone.
Whichever one makes a stone boat that floats on the water gets to be king. Horus
cheats by making a boat of plaster and wood that looks like stone, and so wins
the contest, upon which Set turns himself into a hippopotamus and rips Horus’s
boat to shreds.
The suit between Horus and Set is finally decided when Osiris sends one last
letter saying that he will harvest the hearts of those who refuse to deal justly with
their fellows. This frightens the gods into making a final decision. Set is bound
in chains and Horus is made king, at which point Set concedes the throne to him,
and the gods rejoice that the issue has finally been decided.
Imhotep (Imouthes)
Deification of rulers, whether during their lifetimes or shortly after their deaths,
was a common occurrence in the ancient world. Egyptian kings were thought to
be both the offspring and living manifestation of a god, usually Horus or Amen-
Ra. It was rather less common for other persons to achieve deified status,
although it did happen from time to time. For ancient Egypt, we see this
particularly in the person of Imhotep, the vizier of the First Dynasty pharaoh
Djoser and probable architect of Djoser’s step pyramid in what is now Saqqara.
Imhotep eventually was worshiped as a god of wisdom and healing.
Imhotep’s glorification and later deification grew out of a tradition of reverence
for his wisdom and skill, because the historical Imhotep was a talented, skilled
man who was more than worthy of the pharaoh’s trust. Over time, Imhotep’s
legend acquired various accretions. Through these accretions, Imhotep
eventually was credited with the authorship of several wisdom texts, was
supposed to have been a physician and healer, and was eventually considered to
be the son of Ptah, the supreme god of Memphis. Some versions of Imhotep’s
parentage state that his mother, Khereduankh, was a mortal woman, while others
claimed she was the daughter of the god Banebdjedet, which led some people to
revere her as a divine being in her own right. A third claim about Imhotep’s
origins makes him fully divine, stating that he was the son of Ptah and Sekhmet.
Alignment of Imhotep with Ptah, rather than with a different deity, stems from
Ptah’s role as the patron of architects, builders, and craftsmen. In his role as a
wise man, Imhotep also became a patron god of scribes.
Accretions to Imhotep’s legend and his eventual deification occurred over a very
long span of time. References to Imhotep as a glorified or deified figure only
appear beginning in the Middle Kingdom, hundreds of years after Imhotep’s
death. Moreover, legends about Imhotep and various facets of his biography
seem to have been created out of whole cloth; there is no evidence that he
himself wrote wisdom texts (although one attributed to him does survive) or
served as a healer, and his supposed divine or semi-divine status obviously is a
work of imagination rather than fact.
One early posthumous reference to Imhotep comes from one of the Harper’s
Songs. The texts of these songs are sometimes found inscribed in tombs and
sometimes on papyrus scrolls. The text of the song in question is preserved in a
New Kingdom papyrus, but the language dates it to the Middle Kingdom. [43] In
the papyrus, the song is labeled as having been found in the tomb of King Intef,
but since several kings used that name, it is impossible to know exactly which
one is intended by the label. The song is a meditation on death; below is a brief
excerpt:
Yet those who built tombs,
Their places are gone,
What has become of them?
I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hardedef,
Whose sayings are recited whole.
What of their places?
Their walls have crumbled,
Their places are gone,
As though they had never been! [44]
In this song, we can see that Imhotep is revered but not yet considered a divine
being, since the song claims that he is dead.
At least by the reign of Amenhotep III, however, Imhotep was receiving worship
in the form of libations. The text of a libation prayer is attested in multiple
papyri up through the Late Period. [45] Further, it is during the Late Period that
Imhotep begins to be seen as a divine being, and by the Ptolemaic Period his
godhood seems to have been well established. [46] During the Ptolemaic Period,
Imhotep became quite popular among the Greeks, who identified Imhotep with
Asclepius, the Greek god of physicians and healing.
Two legends survive that recall Imhotep’s deeds. One is a Ptolemaic-era stele
that preserves the legend of King Djoser and the famine, which is summarized in
the chapter on the god Khnum below. The other tale is much later, having been
preserved on a Roman-period papyrus from the Tebtunis Temple Library. Below
is a summary of the Tebtunis story by archaeologist Marina Escolano-Poveda:
This text and other sources describe [Imhotep’s] divine
father Ptah, his mother Khereduankh, and his sister
Renpetneferet, sometimes also referred to as his wife.
Imhotep is depicted as a powerful magician in Djoser's
royal court. In one episode, he travels to Assyria to
recover the 42 limbs of Osiris and fights in a magical
contest against an Assyrian sorceress. [47]
In addition to the magical powers attributed to the living Imhotep in the Tebtunis
story, other late texts also ascribe to him divine powers after his death and
elevation to godhood. A stele carved during the reign of Cleopatra VII was made
in memory of Taimhotep, wife of the high priest of Ptah at Memphis. Part of the
stele is devoted to the story of how Taimhotep was finally able to give her
husband a male heir, which she achieved after she and her husband prayed
together to Imhotep, “the god great in wonders, effective in deeds, who gives a
son to him who has none.” [48] That the cult of Imhotep was both popular and
important is also shown by the preservation of a hymn addressed to him in the
Temple of Ptah at Karnak, which was located next to the great temple to Amen-
Ra, one of the most important religious centers in all of ancient Egypt.
Isis
The goddess Isis is one of the Egyptian deities most familiar to people today.
Originally a goddess of fertility, motherhood, and childbirth, Isis was also
considered to be an ancestor of the pharaohs of Egypt, who were thought to be
both the direct descendants of Isis’s son, Horus, and manifestations of Horus
himself. Isis was associated with magic and with healing, and many surviving
prayers and magic spells call upon her for aid. Isis appears to have been a
relatively obscure goddess in the Early Dynastic Period (also known as the
Archaic Period), which began c. 3100 BCE, but she became one of the most
important and enduring figures of the Egyptian pantheon. After the conquest of
Egypt by Alexander the Great, the Greeks and Romans also began to worship
Isis, constructing their own rites and mysteries around her cult. Even today,
some modern pagans worship Isis and create rituals around her myth.
The earliest apparent reference to Isis may be on a tablet made by Hor-Aha, an
early First Dynasty pharaoh of the Archaic Period. This tablet refers to “Sothis,
Opener of the Year, Inundation 1,” which might be a reference to Isis because
she was often linked with Sothis, the star that we know today as Sirius, whose
rising always signaled the flooding of the Nile, an event that was vital to ancient
Egyptian agriculture. [49]
Otherwise, the first written references to Isis date from the next major period in
ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom, and more specifically from the Fifth
Dynasty. These references appear in writings known collectively as the Pyramid
Texts, which are inscriptions on the walls of the tombs of some of the pharaohs
of Egypt and their queens in what is now Saqqara, Egypt, which originally had
been the Egyptian capital of Memphis. The earliest Pyramid Texts are in the
tomb of Unas, who ruled Egypt between c. 2375 and c. 2345 BCE. However,
Egyptologist James P. Allen states that the somewhat archaic form of the
language used for the texts in Unas’s tomb suggests that they may in fact be
much older. [50]
In all of the Pyramid Texts, Isis functions as one of the deities who cares for the
soul of the pharaoh as it makes its transition into the afterlife. For example, texts
in the pyramid of Unas depict Isis offering her breast for the soul of Unas to
suckle and asking her to bring him back to life, just as she did for her
husband/brother, Osiris. [51] Isis also performs similar services for the other kings
and queens whose tombs preserve these texts, most of which date from the Sixth
Dynasty, although one dates from the Eighth.
Egyptologist Susan Tower Hollis observes parallels between Isis’s role as a
guide into the afterlife with the role of human women who prepared the bodies
for burial. Like human women, Isis is not alone in her task; in the Pyramid Texts
she is consistently paired with her sister, Nephthys. [52] Hollis notes further that
the familiar story of Osiris’s death and Isis’s subsequent search for and
resurrection of his body is primarily retained not in ancient Egyptian sources but
in the works of the Roman historian and scholar Plutarch, whose De Iside et
Osiride (“Concerning Isis and Osiris”) was written in the second century CE. [53]
Isis’s connection to Egyptian royal authority is attested in part by the use of a
throne as a sort of headdress in many ancient Egyptian visual representations of
the goddess. Indeed, her name in Egyptian is Eset , which literally means “seat”
or “throne.” However, this is not the only way in which Isis is depicted. During
the New Kingdom, Isis begins to be shown wearing a crown of cow’s horns that
hold up a sun disk, attesting to the conflation of Isis with the cow-goddess
Hathor, an earlier Egyptian goddess whose popularity waned as that of Isis grew.
Although Isis was hailed as a goddess of fertility, especially with reference to the
annual flooding of the Nile that brought in the rich silt that made farming
possible in Egypt’s arid desert climate, she was not herself a creator goddess but
rather the great-great-granddaughter of the original creator god, Atum.
According to the myth of Isis and Osiris, Osiris becomes the ruler of Egypt,
teaching people agriculture and law. When Seth becomes jealous of Osiris’s
power, he creates a chest made precisely to Osiris’s measurements. Seth tricks
Osiris into getting into the chest and then dumps it into the Nile, where it floats
all the way to the Delta. When the chest washes up on the shore, a tamarisk tree
grows around it. The tree is later felled by the king of Byblos, who uses it in the
construction of his house.
Distraught at Osiris’s disappearance, Isis goes searching for him. She eventually
locates the tree—now being used as a pillar—and manages to free Osiris from it.
By this time, Osiris is dead, so Isis carries his body to a swamp, where she hides
from the vengeful Seth. Seth eventually finds the hiding place while Isis is away
and dismembers Osiris’s body, scattering the pieces throughout the land.
Once again, Isis goes looking for her husband, this time with the help of her
sister, Nephthys. The sisters manage to find and reconnect all the parts of
Osiris’s body except his penis, which has landed in the Nile and has been eaten
by a fish. Osiris comes back to life through the force of Isis’s magic, but because
his body is incomplete, he can no longer stay among the living; he has become a
mummy, and thus he passes into the Underworld to become the lord of the dead.
Isis then gives birth to Horus, the son Osiris gives her when she magically
removes his seed from him while she is in the form of a kite, a small bird of
prey.
In this myth, we can see many connections between Isis and various aspects of
Egyptian life and religion. The myth designates her as the originator of
mummification and a participant in funerary rites along with her sister,
Nephthys; her magic allows the dead to return to life and to move into the
Underworld, a role that she is repeatedly called upon to play in funerary writings
such as the Pyramid Texts; and she becomes the mother of the royal houses of
Egypt through her son, Horus.
For all her importance to Egyptian religion and funerary practices, Isis did not
have a temple of her own until fairly late, and even then, most of those temples
were built by rulers who were not themselves Egyptians. The earliest temple to
Isis was erected c. 690 BCE by the Cushite pharaoh Taharqa in Philae, an
important sacred center near the First Cataract of the Nile. The temple at Philae
was enlarged by Nectanebo II, the last Egyptian pharaoh, in the mid-fourth
century BCE, but otherwise the rest of the construction was overseen by non-
Egyptians, including some of the Hellenistic rulers during the Ptolemaic Period
and then later by the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Hadrian.
The temple complex at Philae remained in use for the worship of Isis until the
middle of the sixth century CE, when it was converted into a Christian church by
Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527–565 CE). In modern times, the temple
complex was removed to an island in the middle of Lake Nasser because of
damage from the flooding caused by the Aswan Dam. The temple underwent
heavy restoration work as part of the moving process, and was reopened to the
public in 1980.
The end of nearly three thousand years of Egyptian dynastic rule, beginning with
the Persian conquest in 343 BCE, had important effects on Egyptian religious
practices. A succession of Persian kings held sway over Egypt until 332 BCE,
when the Macedonian military leader Alexander the Great swooped in and took
over the country. Alexander’s conquest set in motion the Hellenization of Egypt,
a process that gained steam after 309 BCE, when the Macedonian Argead
succession came to an abrupt end with the assassination of Alexander’s son.
After a brief interregnum, a Greek companion of Alexander’s took the throne of
Egypt as Ptolemy I Soter (“Ptolemy the Savior”) in 305 BCE.
Ptolemy’s accession ushered in a period of alteration of Egyptian culture through
the importation of Greek rulers and Greek immigrants. This influx of Greek
culture influenced certain aspects of Egyptian culture and religious practices,
despite the support of the Ptolemaic rulers for native Egyptian religious
expression, and despite Egyptian resentment toward their Greek overlords. The
Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE created additional ties between Egypt and
the Roman Empire, ensuring interplay between Roman and Egyptian culture as
well.
One outcome of this exchange among Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures was
the growth of the Isis cult, which found sturdy footholds in both Greece and
Rome, although acceptance of the worship of Egyptian deities in Rome initially
met with some official governmental resistance. [54] Alexander’s capital city of
Alexandria, situated on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast along the northwestern
edge of the Nile Delta, was a prominent locus for the growth of this cult.
Alexandria’s strategic location, economic power, and reputation as a seat of
learning made it an ideal place for people from Greece and other parts of the
ancient world to do business and to start new lives, and part of that process was
the adoption and transformation of local religious ideas and practices.
However, the Hellenic expansion of the Isis cult was not entirely organic.
Ptolemy I recognized the need to integrate Greek and Egyptian religious
practices, and so he commanded two priests, Manetho, a native Egyptian, and
Timotheus, the son of Greek immigrants, to help align the two religions and
smooth over the places where important conceptions about the various deities
were in conflict. [55] Historian R. E. Witt reports that the result of Manetho and
Timotheus’s collaboration was the elevation of Isis and her son Horus to the
status of Alexandria’s primary deities, with Anubis following close behind. But
a mother goddess is nothing without a consort, so a new deity named Serapis (or
Sarapis) was created, both as an outgrowth of the cult of the Apis bull at
Memphis and as a syncretization of aspects of Greek deities, such as Zeus and
Hades, with aspects of Egyptian deities, such as Osiris and Amen. [56]
Isis herself underwent a process of syncretization. Ancient Greek writers such as
Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus identified her with Demeter, while Plutarch
aligned her with Demeter’s daughter, Persephone. [57] Historian Vincent Arieh
Tobin states that the identification of Isis with Demeter has to do in part with the
roles of both Demeter and Isis as goddesses of fertility and, in particular, with
their association with grain crops, while author Joshua J. Mark suggests that it is
the journey of each goddess to find a deceased loved one that linked the two in
the minds of ancient Greeks. [58]
However the goddess Isis was perceived by worshipers or her identity shaped for
public perception by rulers, it is undeniable that her cult became one of the most
important in many locations throughout the Mediterranean Basin during the
Ptolemaic Period. We can see her importance in the Isis aretalogy, or list of
deeds, from Cyme in Asia Minor, which was probably written sometime in the
second century CE by a Greek named Demetrius, who claimed to have copied it
from a stele at the temple of Hephaestus in Memphis. In the excerpt from the
aretalogy given below, Isis claims to be the daughter of the Greek god Kronos
and is elevated to the status of a creator goddess as well as an establisher of
order and ruler over various aspects of nature:
I gave and ordained laws for men, which no one is able to change.
I am eldest daughter of Kronos.
I am wife and sister of King Osiris.
I am she who findeth fruit for men.
I am mother of King Horus.
I am she that riseth in the Dog Star
For me was the city of Bubastis built.
I divided the earth from the heaven.
I showed the paths of the stars.
I ordered the course of the sun and the moon.
I devised business in the sea. [59]
In addition to syncretizing Egyptian and Greek deities, Hellenized worship of
Isis, along with its eventual Roman expression, took the form of a mystery cult
similar to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were celebrated in honor of the Greek
goddess Demeter. Mystery cults had extensive rules for how one might become
an initiate and complex rituals that guided the practice of initiation and worship.
Information about the shape of the mysteries of Isis survives in the
Metamorphoses by Apuleius, a Numidian writing in Latin in the second century
CE. Apuleius’s Metamorphoses is also known as The Golden Ass , after the
central misfortune of the protagonist, Lucius, who is turned into a donkey.
Lucius is later restored to his human form by the goddess Isis, whereupon he
becomes an initiate in the mysteries of that goddess. Historian Antonía Tripolitis
provides this summary of the mysteries according to Apuleius:
[I]nitiation into the Isaic cult was limited to individuals
who were selected by Isis herself and who were able to
afford the high expenses involved in the initiation.
These individuals were notified of the honor by Isis in a
dream. Prior to the initiation, the individual underwent
a bath of purification and 10 days of strict fasting. The
initiate was then dressed in a linen robe and permitted
to enter the sanctuary where he/she wandered in the
 dark places of the underworld and underwent certain
trials. The morning after the initiation, the initiate,
standing on a wooden podium before the statue of Isis,
was presented to the crowd. This day was considered a
new birthday for the initiate. It signified that he/she had
died to the old life and was reborn to a new course of
life and salvation under the protection of Isis. [60]
Worship of Isis was not completely relegated to mystery cults in the Greco-
Roman world, however. Every year in March, beginning in the first century CE,
the Romans celebrated a public festival called Navigium Isidis (“the Ship of
Isis”). [61] During this festival, which marked the official start to the sailing
season, a special boat consecrated to Isis would be launched into the sea in a
petition for the goddess’s protection of sailors, fishermen, and all those who
traveled the waves. [62]
Although the cult of Isis waned as time progressed, it did not disappear entirely.
In the eighteenth century, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart referred to aspects of the
Isis mystery cult in his opera The Magic Flute , in which the lead character,
Tamino, must undergo a series of trials in order to win entry into the Temple of
Light, and in which a hymn to Isis and Osiris is sung. More recently, modern
pagans have adopted Isis as a deity worthy of reverence. Authors such as
Normandi Ellis and de Traci Regula have written books explaining the history of
the Isis cult and demonstrating how modern devotees might adapt the worship of
Isis to their own spiritual needs. [63]
From her humble beginnings as a native Egyptian funerary goddess and patron
of fertility and motherhood, Isis rose to significantly greater stature in the Greco-
Roman world than she had held in her own native Egypt. This may be so
because it is easy to identify with the goddess’s struggles in her myth: her
sorrow at the death of her spouse and desire to raise him from the dead, her
attempts to protect her young son, and her connection with human aspects of life
and death through the agricultural cycle and funerary rites. It is no surprise,
therefore, that unlike many other ancient deities, Isis has remained a vivid
character in the human imagination even five centuries after she first began to be
worshiped along the banks of the Nile.
Khnum (Chnum)
Khnum was the god of the source of the Nile, and in some myths was considered
to be a creator god. Khnum is usually pictured as a man with the head of a ram.
The horns of this ram do not curl in a spiral but rather are wavy and extend out
horizontally to the left and right over the ram’s head. The primary cult centers
for Khnum were at Elephantine, an island in the Nile River just downstream
from the First Cataract, and Esna, which is on the west bank of the Nile, south of
Luxor.
The identity of Khnum’s consort varied depending on location. At Elephantine,
Khnum was said to be the husband of Satis, the goddess of war, hunting, and
fertility, and the father of Anuket, the goddess of the cataracts of the Nile. At
Esna, Khnum’s consort was variously Neith or Menhit, who were both war
goddesses (although Neith was considerably more popular and powerful), and
Khnum’s son was Heka, the god of medicine and magic. Khnum was also
associated with Hapy, the god of the Nile floods, and was said to be a
manifestation of the soul of the sun god, Ra. When Khnum was acting in that
capacity, he carried the name Khnum-Ra.
In addition to ensuring the annual flooding of the Nile, Khnum also created the
world out of nothing and formed the first human beings on his potter’s wheel.
He made men and women out of clay and breathed life into them, giving each
person a ba , or soul. A surviving hymn to Khnum from the temple at Esna
details his act of creation, listing various body parts along with their functions,
and also stating that Khnum made the plants and the animals. [64]
Although Khnum was worshiped primarily at Elephantine and Esna, he was
known and revered throughout Egypt. He is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts,
which date from the Fifth Dynasty and which are written on tombs near Saqqara,
at the base of the Nile Delta at the opposite end of the river from Khnum’s main
cult centers. For example, Khnum is said to have built a ferryboat for the
pharaoh Unas, and he is credited with having created the pharaoh Teti. [65]
Khnum’s importance as a creator and controller of the Nile floods was
occasionally harnessed for political purposes. When Queen Hatshepsut assumed
the throne following the death of her husband, Pharaoh Thutmose II, she
promulgated the myth that Amen was her father and that her body and soul were
made by Khnum himself, as part of an effort to legitimize her rule.
Another myth states that when a famine descended upon the land, Pharaoh
Djoser had a dream wherein Khnum appeared to him and promised to make the
Nile flood so that the famine would stop. In thanks for the god’s help, Djoser
gave a grant of land and yearly tithes to be paid to Khnum’s temple. It is unclear
whether the story about Djoser actually dates from the Third Dynasty, since it is
preserved on a stele that dates from Ptolemaic times. It is possible that the story
is actually from Ptolemaic Egypt but was forged to make it seem older, in order
to give it more weight and importance.
Khonsu (Khons, Chons)
Khonsu, whose name means “traveler,” was the Egyptian god of the moon. He is
usually depicted as a mummy with a child’s shaved head and braided sidelock,
although sometimes he is shown as a man with a falcon’s head wearing a
headdress in which the moon disk is set. One of Khonsu’s main cult centers was
the city of Thebes. In Thebes, as well as in the rest of southern Egypt, Khonsu
was part of the Theban Triad, in which the god Amen was Khonsu’s father and
the goddess Mut was his mother. Within the great temple of Amen in Karnak,
Khonsu has his own precinct. In the northern part of Egypt, however, Khonsu
was in a triad with his parents Ptah and Sekhmet, while in the Fayum, his parents
were said to be Hathor and Sobek.
As a moon good, Khonsu was sometimes associated with Thoth, and therefore
was seen as a god of calendars and timekeeping. In the myth of the birth of the
children of Nut, Khonsu loses at dice to Thoth, and as a result, he has to forfeit a
fifth of his light. Thoth uses that light to make the five intercalary days that were
added to the 360-day lunar calendar in order to keep it aligned with the seasons.
Egyptologist Geraldine Price notes that the earliest mentions of Khonsu paint
him as a god to be feared, because he “strangled lesser deities and ate the hearts
of the dead.” [66] He was also feared because of his role as Keeper of the Books
of the End of the Year, a list of all the people who were destined to die during
that year. [67] When Khonsu played that role, he was thought to take on the shape
of a baboon, another aspect that he shares with Thoth.
Sometimes Khonsu’s ferocity was called upon to cast out demons and heal the
sick. We see this in one of the primary myths about Khonsu, which is preserved
in a fourth-century BCE inscription that details how he healed a princess from
demonic possession. In the story, a princess from a country called Bekhten
becomes very ill because a demon has taken hold of her. Pharaoh Rameses II,
who is married to the princess’s sister, is asked for help, so he sends his learned
men to Bekhten to see what might be done. The most learned and skilled of all
these wise men tries his best to cure the young woman, but soon discovers that
he has no power over the demon. The learned men return home, sorrowful that
they could not help.
When Rameses hears what happened, he goes to the Temple of Khonsu to ask
for aid. The priests of the temple suggest taking a statue of the god to Bekhten so
that the god can fight the demon. Khonsu agrees to go, so Rameses sends him to
Bekhten with a great retinue, and the god is immediately brought before the
afflicted princess. Khonsu has a conversation with the demon, who demands that
the people of Bekhten hold a festival in his honor if they want him to leave.
Khonsu decides that this is a reasonable request and agrees to the demon’s terms.
The king of Bekhten also agrees, and so the demon leaves, after which the king
holds the feast as he promised. Once the festival is completed, the princess is
well again, upon which the king orders another festival, this time to celebrate the
princess’s return to health and to give thanks to Khonsu for his help.
After the festival of thanksgiving, the Egyptian priests ask leave to depart, but
the king doesn’t want them to go because he’s afraid the demon might come
back once Khonsu leaves. The priests then make a shrine for Khonsu in Bekhten,
where he is greatly honored. The priests and Khonsu spend three years in
Bekhten, at the end of which the god appears to the king in a dream and tells him
that he wants to go home. The king is saddened by this, but he understands what
he must do. He gives the priests many gifts for themselves and other treasures
besides for them to put in Khonsu’s temple in Egypt. The priests take the god
home, and everyone lives in peace thereafter.
Maat (Ma’at, Ma’et, Mayet)
The goddess Maat was the personification of justice, law, cosmic order, and
right living, and as such was one of the most important deities in the Egyptian
pantheon. She is often portrayed as a beautiful woman wearing a dress and a
headband in which an ostrich feather has been placed. Maat was not only a
goddess, however; as a moral, religious, and legal concept, maat played a vital
role in Egyptian kingship and in the daily life of all Egyptians. Egyptologist
Geraldine Pinch notes that “[t]he primary duty of an Egyptian king was to be the
champion of maat . In the afterlife, the dead were judged on whether they had
done and spoken maat .” [68] This judgment was accomplished by weighing the
heart of the deceased person against the goddess Maat’s ostrich feather. A just
heart would be equal in weight to the feather, or even lighter, while an evil heart
would be heavier. The person with a just heart would be allowed to go on to
paradise, while those who had evil hearts were consumed by Ammit.
Maat was usually seen as the wife of Thoth and the daughter of Ra, and was said
to travel with Ra in his solar barge. Author Veronica Ions notes that Maat, when
part of the crew of Ra’s barque, represented “[t]he light which Ra brought into
the world … he created the world by putting her in the place of chaos.” [69]
But Maat was more than Ra’s creature: she was also the basis for Ra’s own
power. Visual representations of this sometimes show Ra sitting on a small
plinth, which represents Maat. Maat is the foundation upon which Ra sits, and
therefore, she represents the foundation of cosmic order. The depiction of Maat
as a plinth that supports a god is not limited to Ra. Osiris and Ptah are also
frequently shown standing on this platform, which visually reinforced their own
authority and dedication to justice and order.
Nefertem (Nefertum)
The word “nefer” means “beautiful” in ancient Egyptian, and the god Nefertem
was associated particularly with the beauty of the lotus flower. Because of the
lotus’s sweet scent, Nefertem was also the god of perfumes. In the Memphite
Triad, Nefertem was the son of Ptah and Sekhmet. Nefertem is often depicted as
a beautiful young man, sometimes with the head of a lion, with a lotus flower
headdress. Because of this association with the lotus, Nefertem was also
connected in the Egyptian religious imagination to aspects of the creation of the
universe and to the creator god Ra.
One ancient Egyptian creation story says that, in the beginning, there was only a
lotus floating on the waters of Nun. When the lotus opened, the sun god Ra was
born from inside it. Egyptologist Geraldine Pinch states that the connection
between the sun and the lotus flower in this creation myth likely comes from
observations of the lotus’s behavior. It only opens during the day, and it is
pollinated by beetles, an insect that was considered to be a form of Khepera, the
god of the rising sun. [70]
Neith (Neit)
The goddess Neith had her primary cult center in the city of Sais in the Nile
Delta. Her name seems to mean “the terrifying one,” and her primary symbol
appears to represent two arrows crossed over a shield. These attributes suggest
that she originally was a warlike deity. Neith is sometimes depicted as a woman
wearing a dress, with the cartouche-shaped symbol just mentioned on her head,
while at other times she is shown wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt. She
was a goddess of weaving, mothers, and wisdom, and she was also considered to
be a creator deity.
In her role as a creator, Neith had nonbinary gender. Geraldine Pinch states that
Neith was referred to as “Mother and Father of All Things,” a deity who
“created the world by speaking seven magical words.” [71] This version of the
creation myth is preserved at the Temple of Khnum at Esna. In this myth, Neith
emerges from the primeval waters, creates the primeval mound, and then speaks
creation into being. [72]
Neith was the mother of the crocodile god Sobek and was considered to be one
of the great mother goddesses of Egypt. She was respected for her wisdom, and
in the myth “The Battle of Horus and Set,” the gods appeal to her to settle the
dispute over who should be the king of Egypt. Her reply in support of Horus is
curt and no-nonsense, as is the wont of older women who are fed up with the
squabbling of children.
Nephthys (Nebt-het)
Nephthys was the daughter of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. Even
though she was the sister to Isis, Osiris, and Set, Nephthys often takes on a
secondary role in most myths. However, her role is still very important; it is with
Nephthys’s help that Isis is able to reassemble the pieces of her dismembered
husband and bring him back to life. For this reason, Nephthys was associated
with death and funerals, and she is often depicted standing alongside the bier
with Isis. Further, as a goddess of weaving, Nephthys was specifically associated
with the weaving of linen wrappings for mummies.
Nephthys was nominally married to her brother Set, just as Isis was paired off
with Osiris. Nephthys’s marriage does not seem to have been a happy one; at
one point she seduces Osiris, and Anubis is born from that union. Nephthys is
more commonly depicted as spending time with Isis rather than Set in both
myths and various ancient illustrations of mythical scenes.
Together with Isis, Nephthys had the function of a mourner at a funeral. This is
shown in the funerary texts mentioned above, but especially in a surviving text
known as “The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” in which the two goddesses
mourn for the slain Osiris. This text came to be performed during rites
commemorating the death of Osiris, and it eventually came to be included as part
of the Book of the Dead .
Nun (Noun, Nu)
To the ancient Egyptians, Nun was simultaneously a place, a substance, a
concept, and a deity. Nun was the primordial waters from which all creation
arose, both as the substance of the waters themselves and as the place where
those waters resided. Nun was the place in which the universe began and a place
that continued to exist even after the world was made. The creator god Atum
came into being in the middle of Nun, and it is in Nun that he gave birth to his
children Shu and Tefnut, the air and the light of the world. As a concept, Nun
represented insubstantiality and formlessness, while as a deity, Nun was the
frog-headed personification of both the primordial waters and of formlessness,
existing alongside his snake-headed consort Naunet as part of the Hermopolitan
Ogdoad, the collection of eight deities who arose from nothingness to undertake
the first acts of creation.
Nun was not just a god of the past, nor did Nun cease to be of cosmological
importance once the world was created. Even after the universe had been
brought fully to life, Nun played important roles in the Egyptian understanding
of how the world worked. Nun flowed through the Underworld, and Nun was the
origin of the waters of the Nile. Various deities and demons dwelt in Nun, from
where they could arise to help or hinder humans. For example, the great serpent
Apep (Apophis) dwelt in Nun and had to be vanquished every night lest he
devour the sun as it made its transit from west to east on the waters of the
Underworld, and when the boat of Ra made that transit safely, some myths
claimed that it was the waters of Nun that raised up the sun in the morning.
In addition to the omnipresent Nile, other waters were used as physical
representations of Nun in ancient Egyptian religious architecture and practice.
For example, because the vulture goddess Nekhebet also inhabited Nun, her
temple at Elkab had a sacred lake representing the primordial waters.
Waters representing Nun were an important part of the pharaoh’s daily routine.
Every morning when the pharaoh arose, a ceremony called the “Rite of the
House of Morning” was performed, in which the pharaoh was bathed and
dressed for the day. The water used for the bathing was taken from a sacred
source and represented Nun. Being bathed in the waters of Nun was thought to
represent the rebirth of the pharaoh, an echo of Ra’s journey across Nun in the
Underworld to be reborn every morning as the rising sun. In this way, the
pharaoh’s body was aligned with that of Ra and made to participate in the god’s
own activities.
The Ogdoad of Hermopolis
The Ogdoad was a set of eight primeval gods worshiped at Khemenu in central
Egypt. Khemenu literally means “Eight Town,” a reference to the Ogdoad, but
today we are more familiar with its Greek name: Hermopolis (“City of
Hermes”). The Ogdoad was made up of four pairs of deities, with each pair
consisting of a god and his consort. The gods were usually depicted as men with
frogs’ heads, while the goddesses were shown as women with serpents’ heads.
Each divine pair represented a different cosmic concept, as described in the table
below:
Deities Concept
Amen and Amaunet Hiddenness
Heh and Hauhet Eternity
Kek and Kekhet Darkness
Nun and Naunet Primeval waters
According to the Hermopolitan creation story, these eight deities created the
world out of a primeval mound that stood in the waters of Nun. These primordial
waters were represented by a sacred lake at the main temple in Hermopolis, and
a small island in the middle of the lake was said to be the primeval mound itself.
The myth goes on to state that once the Ogdoad had created the world, they ruled
over it for a time, then died and went into the Underworld, where they continued
to cause the Nile to flow and the sun to rise.
Although the Ogdoad were important creator deities in Hermopolis, the
Hermopolitan creation myth in fact had four other variants:
1. A celestial goose called the “Great Cackler”
lays an egg on the primeval mound; the egg
contains the god Ra, who then goes on to create
the world.
2. Similar to the first version, but the bird
laying the cosmic egg is an ibis, representing the
god Thoth (identified with Hermes by the Greeks,
which is the origin of the name “Hermopolis”).
3. A lotus flower rises out of the primeval
waters, and when it opens, Ra is born from inside
it.
4. Similar to the third version, but it is a scarab
 beetle inside the lotus, and when the beetle weeps,
humans are created.

Of the deities in the Ogdoad, Amen and Nun both went on to have important
places in the mythology and religion of Egypt as a whole, while the others were
worshiped primarily at Hermopolis.
Osiris
Osiris, the dying and rising god, was one of the most important deities in the
Egyptian pantheon. The eldest child of the sky goddess Nut and the earth god
Geb, Osiris was credited with bringing civilization to human beings, teaching
them agriculture and law, and giving them grain to grow and eat. Osiris was both
the brother and the husband of the goddess Isis, who assisted him in his work
during his life. Following his dismemberment by his jealous brother Set and his
later resurrection by Isis, Osiris descended into the Tuat, or Underworld, where
he became the god of the dead and the judge of souls.
Osiris’s name in Egyptian is Usir , which means “powerful.” (“Osiris” is a Latin
version of the name.) Osiris was closely associated with the agricultural cycle,
and especially with the risings and fallings of the Nile, upon which all Egyptian
agriculture depended. In his guise as the god of the dead, Osiris is often depicted
as having green skin and swathed in a mummy’s bands, wearing the white,
feathered atef crown and holding the scepter and flail that were the symbols of
Egyptian kingship. The greenness of his skin is not connected to death, but
rather is a reference to his lifegiving power through his control of the
inundations of the Nile. Other representations of Osiris show him as a normal
human being, dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh.
The primary Osiris myth states that when Osiris ruled over Egypt long, long ago,
his brother Seth became jealous of his power and arranged to kill him by sealing
him inside a specially made coffin and tossing it into the Nile. The coffin washes
up on the shores of the city of Byblos, where it becomes lodged in the roots of a
growing tamarisk tree. When the tamarisk is fully grown, the king of Byblos cuts
it down to use as a pillar in his palace, completely unaware of the god concealed
inside. Osiris’s sister-wife, Isis, goes on a journey looking for her husband. She
manages to locate the tamarisk tree and free Osiris’s body from it. With the help
of other gods, she resurrects Osiris, but this second life doesn’t last long. Seth
finds Osiris and kills him again, this time chopping his body up into fourteen
pieces that he scatters throughout the land. Isis goes looking for the pieces of her
husband’s body, and she finds all but the penis, which had been thrown into the
Nile and devoured by a fish. Isis puts Osiris back together by mummifying his
body, but this time he cannot stay in the land of the living; he instead goes down
into the Tuat, where he reigns as king.
The origins of the Osiris cult are both ancient and complex. It is often assumed
that he has his origins in the ancient city of Djedu in the Nile Delta, where he
may have been conflated with a local fertility god named Andjeti. [73] Originally,
Osiris was a relatively minor god, considered secondary to the sun god, Ra, but
as time wore on, Osiris gradually eclipsed Ra in some respects and became one
of the primary deities of the Egyptian pantheon. This change did not take place
overnight; although it is possible Osiris was worshiped in the earlier dynasties of
the Old Kingdom, it is not until the Fifth Dynasty Pyramid Texts that we see him
being treated as the lord of the dead and facilitator of the resurrection of the
king. It is also during the Fifth Dynasty that we see Osiris’s new importance
within Egyptian religion.
Egyptologist Rosalie David notes that as the Osiris cult grew in popularity, there
was a shift in the Egyptian understanding of the afterlife. According to David,
paradise was initially accessible only by the pharaohs, but during the Middle
Kingdom, this exclusive club was opened to other Egyptian nobles. [74] The
democratization of the afterlife continued until eventually people from all walks
of life were thought to be able to enter into paradise if they had lived good lives.
The Osiris cult, once established, was centered primarily in the southern city of
Abydos, near the modern-day town of El Bayana, with a less important shrine in
the city of Busiris (now Abu Sir Bana) in the central Nile Delta. Abydos was
traditionally thought to be the place where Osiris’s head landed after his
dismemberment by Set, and Busiris the place to which Set flung Osiris’s spine.
Located along the Nile in Upper Egypt, Abydos had a number of temple
complexes and also a royal necropolis, which was used for the burials of early
pharaohs. Burial in a place sacred to Osiris likely reflected the wish that the
person being buried would be resurrected just as the god had been.
According to Egyptologist E. A. Wallace Budge, the temple at Abydos was
constructed during the Twelfth Dynasty at the command of Pharaoh Senusret III.
[75]
Budge notes that a description of this temple survives in the text of a stele
made by Ikhernefert, the official commissioned with its construction. In addition
to the temple building, which the stele reports was made “from sweet-smelling
woods, and inlaid with gold, silver, and lapis-lazuli,” Ikhernefert caused a new
statue of the god and a new neshmet boat to be made. The neshmet boat was
both the sacred boat in which Osiris sailed in his journey through the
Underworld, as described in the Book of the Dead , and also a physical object in
the world of the living, which was a part of sacred processions in honor of the
god. [76]
A basic outline of some of the rites of Osiris also survives on the stele of
Ikhernefert. Ikhernefert says that the statue of the god was richly dressed and
placed inside its neshmet boat, which then was taken on a long procession that
involved several stages that occurred as follows: [77]
 1. A procession involving the jackal-headed
funerary god Wepwawet (not to be confused with
Anubis), who functioned during this festival as a
stand-in for or avatar of Osiris’s son, Horus
2. A mock attack on Osiris’s neshmet boat as it
leaves its sanctuary in Abydos, in which the
attackers are repelled
3. The procession of the neshmet boat moves
eastward from Abydos to Peqer (now Umm Al
Qa’ab), the location of the royal necropolis,
representing Osiris’s death
4. Another mock battle on the riverbank, in
which Osiris’s followers are victorious (although
the ancient historian Herodotus claims that
sometimes these mock battles descended into
actual violence) [78]
5. A procession to return the neshmet boat to
Abydos
6. Various purification rites inside the temple
of the god to close out the festival

The stele of Ikhernefert also preserves some intriguing hints about Ikhernefert’s
other activities with respect to establishing Osiris’s new temple. Apparently
Ikhernefert had been charged with reforming the worship of Osiris in addition to
his construction work, since he claims to have instructed “the hour priests of the
temple so that they might do their duties and know the rituals that pertain to each
day and the festivals at the start of the seasons.” [79]
In addition to presiding over the Tuat and judging the souls of the dead, Osiris
was inextricably linked with fertility. In ancient Egypt, this meant being linked
with the yearly flood cycle of the Nile, which continued into the twentieth
century CE until the construction of dams and a system of canals along the river
put a stop to the inundations. Prior to modern times, the Nile’s yearly flood cycle
began around the middle of August when monsoons that began the previous May
in the Ethiopian highlands dumped an enormous quantity of water into the Nile
and other rivers in the area. The swollen river would rise through the end of
August and reach its peak in September, after which it would begin to recede,
leaving a layer of enormously fertile sediment behind. The receding of the flood
reached its lowest point in April, and in the following August, the cycle would
begin again.
For the ancient Egyptians, the annual floods were integral not only to the
agricultural calendar but also to the religious one, which connected the flood
itself and the fecundity it promoted to the person of and myths about Osiris. In
his role as a god of fertility, Osiris was linked with the life cycle of grain crops,
the success of which was bound up with the cycle of floods. Ancient Egyptians
believed that just as Osiris died and came back to life twice, so too did the seed
“die” when it was sown only to rise back up and be cut down again at harvest
time, when it would “die” again through being transformed into food products
such as bread and beer. [80] Worshipers would even make little effigies of the
mummified Osiris, stuffed with seeds, which they would then plant and tend.
However, not only was the grain that grew from the Nile’s muddy bounty
aligned with Osiris, but as Veronica Ions states, the floodwaters themselves were
also considered to be the “sweat of Osiris’s hands and the tears that Isis shed into
the river.” [81]
The myth of Osiris’s death and subsequent resurrection has led some scholars to
attempt to show a direct line of descent between ancient Egyptian religion and
Christianity, the latter of which centers around the death and resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth. However, scholarly opinion is divided as to whether this
lineage exists. The death and resurrection stories certainly would seem to run in
parallel, at least up to a point. A second parallel might be that Osiris was
considered to be somehow embodied in the grain consumed by his followers,
while according to some Christian sects, Jesus’s essence is said to be contained
in the eucharistic bread because of the words of institution—“this is my body”—
uttered at the Last Supper. [82] And Jesus is seen as a guide and savior who can
restore the souls of the dead to an everlasting life that is open to all people,
regardless of station, a role he shares with Osiris.
Whether there is an actual organic connection between the Osiris cult and the
establishment of Christianity remains an open question, but the adaptation and
transformation of the Osiris cult within the context of Egyptian religion during
the Ptolemaic Period in Egypt is not. Osiris was combined with the Apis bull by
Ptolemy I into a new deity known as Serapis, and the worship of Osiris as a god
in his own right gradually faded out, although rites were still being performed at
the temple complex in Philae until the middle of the fifth century CE, when
pagan practices were outlawed in favor of Christianity.
As was the case in Hellenized Egypt, Osiris has received less attention than Isis
and Thoth from modern occultists and pagans, although scholarly interest in
Osiris as a god of death and resurrection became renewed during the late
nineteenth century, when Sir James George Frazer published The Golden Bough
, a comparative study of world religions. [83] In that study, Frazer connected
Osiris with other gods such as Tammuz/Dumuzi, an ancient Mesopotamian god,
and Attis, a Phrygian deity. However, scholars have since disputed many of
Frazer’s claims, stating that they are not supported by the evidence. [84]
Ptah
The supreme god of the city of Memphis was Ptah. In the Memphite cosmogony,
Ptah is the creator god from whom all other gods spring at the beginning of
creation. First, Ptah (who is also identified with Nun, the primeval waters)
creates Atum, and then Atum goes on to create the Ennead, a collection of nine
gods worshiped primarily at Heliopolis. Ptah also creates the world and sets the
land of Egypt in order. Some scholars think that the elevation of Ptah to supreme
creator might have been an attempt on the part of his priests in Memphis to
create a hierarchy in which the chief gods of Heliopolis were made subordinate
to Memphis’s own. [85]
Ptah is usually depicted as a man wearing a tight skullcap and straight beard. He
holds the was scepter, which was the symbol of power and authority in Egypt.
This scepter has two small horns at its foot and a hook with a kind of antler at
the top. Some images of Ptah show his body swathed tightly in the linen
wrappings of a mummy, with green skin on his face and hands. Ptah’s consort is
the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, and their son is Nefertem, who was said to
have originated as a lotus flower and who was associated with fragrance and
perfumes.
Ptah was the patron of craftsmen in ancient Egypt. Egyptologist George Hart
reports that images of craftsmen praying to Ptah survive on stelae at what is now
Deir el-Medina. These stelae were made by the workers who did sculpting work
for tombs in the Valley of the Kings. [86] This connection between Ptah and
craftsmanship perhaps reached its peak in the person of Imhotep, who served
during the Third Dynasty as the master sculptor to Pharaoh Djoser, and who may
have been the architect of Djoser’s step pyramid. Imhotep’s reputation for
wisdom and integrity eventually led him to be deified, at which point he was
often referred to as the “son of Ptah.” (See the chapter on Imhotep above.)
Ra (Re, Pre)
Ra was the Egyptian god of the sun, an all-powerful creator who rode in the
Barque of Millions of Years across the sky each day to bring light and life to the
earth. At night, the barque descended into the Underworld, where Ra and his
crew had to brave various dangers in order to get to the other side so that the sun
might rise again in the morning. The chief enemy of Ra was the great serpent
Apep (Apophis), who had to be slain each night. Ra’s chief cult center was in the
city of Heliopolis, and he eventually became identified with the creator god
Atum. Egyptologist Leonard Lesko observes that Ra’s cult was so influential and
powerful that it eventually appropriated both the Heliopolitan and Hermopolitan
cosmologies, integrating them into the mythology about Ra’s origins, powers,
and role within the pantheon. [87]
One example of this association with the Heliopolitan cosmology comes from
the Book of the Dead . In that text, Atum, the primary god of the Heliopolitan
Ennead, is the manifestation of the creator at the beginning of creation, just
following his emergence from the primordial waters, while Ra is his
manifestation in the person of the sun god and as the sun itself. [88] In creation
myths, therefore, Atum and Ra become interchangeable versions of the same
deity.
Ra also had multiple forms in his manifestation as the sun. Ra-Horakhty
represented the sun at midday, while Ra-Atum was the setting sun and Khepera
the rising sun in the morning. Each of these forms had their own visual
representations. Khepera was the scarab beetle, who pushed the sun above the
horizon in much the same way that these beetles push balls of dung around. Ra-
Horakhty was pictured as a man with a falcon’s head, and Ra-Atum was pictured
as a human man wearing the double crown of Egypt. In addition, Ra was
sometimes said to become Osiris at night, when he traveled through the
Underworld.
Although each of these representations show a male figure, the manifestation of
Ra’s power, the Eye of Ra, was conceived of as female. The Eye was both part
of Ra and separate from him. He could detach it and send it to do his bidding,
and when he did so, it was in the form of a goddess, such as Hathor or Sekhmet.
We see this in the myth in which Ra decides to destroy all of humanity because
they are leading evil lives and not worshiping the gods properly. To achieve this,
Ra sends his Eye in the form of Hathor (who is also Sekhmet) to kill all the
people and to ravage their lands. Because the Eye was separate from Ra, he did
not always exercise full control over it. In the “Distant Goddess” myth, Ra’s Eye
(again in the form of a goddess such as Hathor) runs away into the desert and has
to be fetched back and reunited with Ra.
The living embodiment of the ba , or spirit, of Ra was the Mnevis bull, a sacred
bull that was kept at the temple of Ra in Heliopolis. This animal was usually all
black, and had two cows to serve as his wives. The cows were said to represent
the goddesses Hathor, who often functioned as the Eye of Ra, and Iusas, a
goddess said to be the hand of Atum that worked to produce the seed from which
all creation was made. When the Mnevis bull died, it was mummified and buried
with great ceremony. Egyptologist Barbara Watterson notes that the Mnevis bull
remained a popular and important aspect of the worship of Ra well into the
Ptolemaic Period. [89]
In some myths, Ra is portrayed as weak and old, or else as vacillating, peevish,
and unwilling to say aloud what he really believes. In the story about how Isis
learned Ra’s true name, Ra is described as an incontinent old man who has lost
all of his teeth, and Isis tortures him with venomous snake bites until he relents
and tells her his name. In “The Battle of Horus and Set,” Ra-Horakhty is the
king of the gods, but when the matter at hand isn’t settled either quickly or to his
liking, he goes off into his tent to sulk. Further, Ra-Horakhty supports Set’s
claim to the throne, but will not come forth to order that Set be given the crown;
in fact, he is described as secretly supporting Set over Horus. In this tale, Ra-
Horakhty lacks the courage of his convictions, and he proposes several
maneuvers intended to get others to make the decision for him.
Ra was often syncretized with other deities. Amen-Ra was one especially
important syncretization in the New Kingdom. Other syncretizations included
Sobek-Ra and Khnum-Ra.
Serapis (Sarapis, Userhapi)
Unlike the other gods in the Egyptian pantheon, Serapis was not a product of the
native Egyptian religious imagination. Serapis did not grow out of the native
Egyptian understanding of the world or its origins, nor was he allied to native
Egyptian ideas about social and political structures. Instead, Serapis was a deity
purpose-built by Ptolemy I, the Greek successor to Alexander the Great, who
wished to find some way to fuse Greek and Egyptian religious expression and so
lend legitimacy to the rule of Egypt by her Greek conquerors.
Serapis was in part a syncretization of the god Osiris and the Apis bull. The Apis
bull was worshiped particularly in Memphis, where he was said to be the son of
Hathor and the herald of Ptah, and where he was a symbol of the ruling pharaoh.
Worship of the Apis bull had been a feature of Egyptian religion at least since
the First Dynasty, and the worship of Osiris became commonplace during the
Fifth, so both were already well entrenched in the Egyptian pantheon by the time
the Ptolemies came to power.
In addition to this syncretization of ancient Egyptian deities, Ptolemy tacked
Greek characteristics onto Serapis to round out the new god’s appeal to both
Greeks and Egyptians. For example, when images of Serapis were made, they
were constructed along the same lines as other contemporary Greek
representations of religious and political figures. Serapis therefore is depicted
realistically as a muscular adult male with long curly hair and a beard, often with
a basket on top of his head, and he shared certain features with Greek gods such
as Zeus, Dionysus, and Hades.
This association with Hades, who in Rome was known as Pluto, is attested to in
the writings of the ancient historian Plutarch, who also states that Serapis was
brought to Egypt by Ptolemy I as the result of a dream. [90] In the dream, the
statue of Pluto at Sinope tells Ptolemy to take him from Sinope and bring him to
Alexandria. The statue supposedly included a representation of Pluto’s three-
headed dog Cerberus. Plutarch goes on to say that when the statue arrived in
Alexandria, Ptolemy declared it to be a representation of Serapis.
In order to form the traditional Egyptian triad, Serapis was said to be the
husband of Isis and the father of Horus. The form of Horus used was that of
Harpocrates, the winged child deity who was the god of secrets and who had
already found favor among Greek worshipers. Although the Egyptian priests in
Heliopolis attempted to integrate Serapis into their religious thought by positing
that Serapis was created when the soul of the Apis bull entered the afterlife and
merged with Osiris, Serapis never really found much favor among the native
Egyptian populace, who preferred to worship their own traditional gods. [91]
Serapis was much more popular outside of Egypt, especially in Rome. In Rome,
Serapis was worshiped alongside Isis, who had a temple that had been built by
Emperor Caligula in the Campus Martius, an important area in ancient Rome
that housed public baths and the temple known as the Pantheon, which is still
intact and may be visited today.
The Roman emperor Vespasian particularly seems to have made use of the
power attributed to Serapis in order to boost his own popularity and authority,
particularly within Egypt, which at that time was part of the Roman Empire. The
ancient historian Tacitus reports that while Vespasian was visiting Alexandria, a
blind man and a man with a disabled hand came to Vespasian saying that Serapis
had sent them to the emperor to be healed. [92] At first Vespasian scoffed at this,
but then he did what the two disabled men asked, and they were healed.
According to Tacitus, Vespasian then made it a point to go to the Serapeum, or
temple to Serapis, where he ordered everyone else to leave so that he might
consult the god alone. There Vespasian had a vision, which he considered to
have been sent by Serapis himself.
Serapis was of sufficient importance in imperial Rome that he often was
depicted on coins. Coinage from the reigns of Vespasian and some later
emperors feature the face of the emperor in profile on one side and an image of
Serapis, sometimes accompanied by Isis, on the other.
Set (Seth, Sutekh)
Set is one of the oldest Egyptian gods, having been worshiped in the Predynastic
Period. Set also is an ambivalent character, representing both good and evil.
Whether his role is good or bad depends partly on the time period and partly on
the activity in which Set is engaged at the time. He was the murderer of his
brother Osiris and a pretender to the throne of Egypt, but he also rode in the
prow of the solar barge and killed Apep, the giant serpent that threatened to
devour the sun every night.
The god of chaos, thunder, and deserts, Set is depicted as a man with the head of
a strange animal that has never been definitively identified. The Set-animal is
black in color, with a long, narrow snout and two upright, rectangular ears. Some
scholars have said that the Set-animal is a composite creature made up of parts
from other animals, while others have suggested that it might represent a type of
dog resembling the modern Saluki.
In Egyptian myth, Set is depicted as jealous and ruthless, willing to murder,
maim, and rape in order to get his way. By the New Kingdom, Set is also
depicted as being more brawn than brain; we see this especially in the story “The
Battle of Horus and Set,” where he is easily fooled by Horus and Isis, who are
just as willing to cheat as Set is.
Perhaps the most famous story in which Set appears is that of Isis and Osiris. In
this story, which is variously summarized in the above chapters on the latter two
deities, Set contrives to murder Osiris not once but twice in order to steal his
throne. In the second instance, Set dismembers Osiris, and because Osiris’s penis
is consumed by a fish, Osiris will never be whole again, despite the heroic
efforts of Isis, Anubis, Thoth, and other deities who work together to resurrect
him.
In the story in which Set contends with Horus for the throne, summarized in the
chapter on Horus above, Set is unwilling to accept the judgment of the court of
the gods, and proposes various contests between himself and Horus to see who
ought to have the throne of Egypt. Neither contest is ever decided in favor of one
or the other, because Horus and his mother Isis try to cheat and thus skew the
results. Set, on the other hand, for all that he may be murderous and rather
stupid, tries to follow the rules when he accepts these challenges.
Rules go out the window, however, when Set sees an opportunity to discredit
Horus first by attempting to rape him and then by trying to shame him by saying
publicly that the sex was consensual. This trick backfires when Set ends up
ejaculating into Horus’s hands. Horus then enlists the help of his mother to show
that Set was lying about what actually happened. Set likewise takes advantage of
an opportunity to maim Horus while the latter is sleeping and therefore
defenseless, but Horus is eventually restored to health by Hathor.
Early in Egyptian history, Set was worshiped primarily in Upper Egypt, where
he had a cult center at Kom Ombo. Set later was worshiped throughout the
country, and several pharaohs had a particular devotion to him. Eventually,
however, Set began to be seen more as a force for evil and fell out of favor.
Egyptologist Geraldine Pinch reports that starting in the New Kingdom,
Egyptian religion began to concentrate more on Set’s crimes, such that the
priests of Horus at Edfu “celebrated a day of castrating Seth and ‘reducing him
to pieces’ in retaliation for Seth’s mutilation of the body of Osiris and the Eye of
Horus.” [93] The process of demonizing Set continued from the New Kingdom
onward and, as Pinch states, reached its peak during the Greco-Roman period, at
which point, “Seth was vilified in most temples.” [94]
Sobek (Suchos)
The crocodile-headed Sobek was a god of the waters and of fertility and the son
of the mother goddess Neith. Sobek originally was a deity specific to the Fayum
region, which in ancient times was a marshy oasis, located about sixty miles
south of what is now Cairo. During the Twelfth Dynasty, pharaohs such as
Amenemhat III worked to harness the water of the Fayum region by creating a
canal from the Nile into Lake Moeris, which seems to have been used as a kind
of reservoir that could be drawn on in times of drought. The chief settlement in
the Fayum in ancient times was Shedet, known in Greek as Crocodilopolis.
Crocodiles are native to the Nile, and since ancient Egyptians often associated
particular animals with particular deities, it should be no surprise that a crocodile
god should have been worshiped in a region known for its wetlands. Ancient
temples to Sobek even kept living crocodiles as exemplars of the god. The
priests cared for the animals carefully and embalmed them for proper burial
when they died. Examinations of mummified adult crocodiles have even found
sets of mummified babies in the mouths of the adults, likely a representation of
one way in which living crocodiles care for their young. Egyptologist Salima
Ikram speculates that “the insertion of babies in this manner was intented [sic ]
to emphasize the positive nurturing and caring aspect of this fearsome beast.” [95]
In addition to his cult in the Fayum, Sobek had a major temple at Kom Ombo,
which lies about halfway between Edfu and Aswan. At Kom Ombo, Sobek was
revered along with Horus. Horus was given one side of the temple, while Sobek
had the other, and each god was given an avatar of Hathor as his consort.
Horus’s son was the god Pantebtawy, “Lord of the Two Lands,” while Sobek
was given the moon god Khonsu to be his child. [96] However, Egyptologist
Barbara Watterson notes that this combination comes with a certain amount of
dissonance, as Horus’s traditional enemy, the evil god Set, often took the form of
a crocodile. [97] Watterson posits that the cult of Sobek at Kom Ombo was
intended to be a stand-in for the worship of Set, whose cult had been outlawed.
[98]
Thoth
In Egyptian mythology, Thoth held a position of great importance as the creator
of writing and law, and as the god who oversaw the calendar and ordered the
times and the seasons. Today, many people are familiar with the depiction of
Thoth as a man with the head of an ibis, but in ancient Egypt he was also
depicted in the form of a baboon, sometimes with a lunar disk over its head and
sometimes without. As with other Egyptian deities, Thoth was adopted by
devotees from outside of Egypt, eventually becoming syncretized with the Greek
messenger god Hermes. Thoth’s association with magic and knowledge also
attracted the interest of alchemists, magicians, and occultists in both the
Renaissance and in more modern times.
There is no single myth describing Thoth’s origins. Depending on the source, he
is variously said to have emerged into being through his own power or to have
been spoken into being by the sun god Ra. In the former myth, Thoth is also the
creator of the universe, an act that he accomplishes in his ibis-form by laying the
egg from which all matter and all being is hatched at the beginning of time.
These varying conceptions of Thoth and his origins arise both from changes in
Egyptian religious thought across time and also from regional differences in
religious practices. In the city of Memphis, the supreme god was Ptah, and Thoth
was conceptualized as both the tongue and the wisdom of Ptah. [99] The myth of
the egg mentioned above, by contrast, comes from the city of Hermopolis, and
may have been a later addition to religious doctrine and practice there. [100]
Indeed, the very name of Hermopolis is a reference to Thoth. The original
Egyptian name was Khemenu, a reference to the Ogdoad, or Eight Gods, that
were worshiped in that city, but when Egypt was Hellenized, the name was
changed to Hermopolis, which literally means “City of Hermes” in Greek. This
change came about because of the syncretization of the Greek god Hermes with
Thoth and because of the central importance of Thoth to Egyptian religious
practice in Hermopolis.
In all parts of Egypt, Thoth was considered to be a lunar god. One myth explains
that Thoth acquired his association with the moon when the heavily pregnant
goddess Nut asked him for help in reversing the curse placed on her by Ra, who
had told her that she would not be able to give birth during any day on the
calendar, which at that time had 360 days. Thoth solves the problem by
gambling with the moon god Khonsu, setting the stakes at a fifth of Khonsu’s
light. When Thoth wins the contest, he uses Khonsu’s light to create five
intercalary days, during which Nut is finally able to give birth to Osiris, Horus,
Set, Isis, and Nephthys. In this myth, we also see Thoth’s role as a god of time
and the calendar, since it is his bet with Khonsu that allows the calendar to be
expanded from the lunar 360 days to the solar 365. Thoth therefore is
responsible for ensuring that the seasons and the calendar remain aligned.
Thoth was credited with inventing the art of writing, and in this capacity he was
especially revered by the scribes of ancient Egypt. Because of this association
with words and writing, Thoth was depicted as the recorder of human deeds who
stood with Anubis beside the scales that weighed human hearts after death in
order to determine the soul’s ultimate eternal fate. In other contexts, Thoth uses
his skills with writing and his wisdom to function as a scribe, herald, and judge
for the supreme god Ra and the other deities. We see this in the New Kingdom
myth “The Battle of Horus and Set,” summarized in the chapter on Horus above.
When Ra desires to send letters to various gods and goddesses, it is Thoth who
takes dictation from Ra and sends the letters. In this story, Thoth also makes
performative proclamations instituting the commands of various deities. When
Thoth makes statements such as “Let this thing be done!” he functions both as a
judge who determines whether laws are to be enacted and as a herald who
announces the start of a new law.
During the Ptolemaic Period, Thoth was absorbed into Greek and Roman
religion, where he was syncretized with the Greek god Hermes, as mentioned
earlier, and with the Roman god Mercury. Like Thoth, Hermes was associated
with writing and was considered to be the messenger or herald of the Olympian
gods. Thoth also acquired Hermes’s role as the guide of souls into the
Underworld, and became known as “Hermes Trismegistus,” or “Thrice-Great
Hermes.”
As Hermes Trismegistus, Thoth was credited with having written a series of
books on magic, known collectively as the Corpus Hermeticum , or “Body of
Works by Hermes.” These texts were, in fact, written by an anonymous human
author during the second century CE and not by Thoth himself, but the
association with the god granted the Corpus a certain cachet among magicians
and seekers after truth. The Corpus was also incredibly important to Renaissance
and Early Modern magicians and was a focal text in the practice of alchemy, a
magical science that laid some of the important groundwork for modern
chemistry.
Interest in Thoth’s magic was revived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries by groups such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret
group interested in magic and the occult whose membership included Irish
revolutionary Maud Gonne and authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W. B. Yeats,
and Bram Stoker. One other member of the Order was the occultist Aleister
Crowley, whose Book of Thoth is an essay on the history and uses of the tarot
deck that draws on aspects of various ancient religions and mythologies,
including those of Egypt. Crowley especially connects Thoth with the tarot
figure of the Juggler (also known in the modern tarot as the Magician), which
Crowley considered to be aligned with Mercury, both the planet and the Roman
god.
The Tuat (Duat)
The Tuat was the ancient Egyptian Underworld, and it had multiple functions
within Egyptian religion and culture. Some functions were cosmological, but
most of them related to beliefs about death and to funerary practices. The Tuat
was the place where people initially went when they died. It was the domain of
Osiris, and it was where the hearts of the dead were weighed to see whether they
were pure and clean and thus worthy of paradise or not. The Tuat was also the
place that the sun god had to traverse each night as he went from west to east to
begin a new day, and it was the place to which the stars descended when their
season in the sky was done.
For both human beings and the sun god Ra, the Tuat was a conduit to rebirth, not
a final resting place. Ancient Egyptians believed that when the sun descended
below the western horizon at night, it entered into the Tuat. When the sun god
entered the Tuat as Atum-Ra, the body of the god was separated from his ba , or
soul, and the body was cast aside and discarded. The sun god therefore needed to
be united with a new body and rejuvenated before he could rise again in the east
as Khepera, the scarab beetle who pushed the sun up into the sky out of the
waters of Nun.
The sun’s barge was sometimes known as the Atet boat or the Barque of
Millions of Years, but when it went into the Underworld, it was renamed the
Meseket boat or Sektet boat. Because there was no wind in the Tuat, the barge
had to be rowed or towed along the path between the western entrance and the
eastern exit. The work of towing or rowing was done by different sets of deities,
depending on where along the path the boat happened to be at the moment. The
sun god was always a passenger, and only helped with the journey by speaking
to the different beings encountered in the Tuat.
When a human being died, their soul went down into the Tuat, where it had to
make its way to the place where the god Anubis weighed the hearts of the dead.
If the heart of the dead person was found to be pure and good, the person would
leave the Tuat and go to the Field of Reeds, which was the Egyptian paradise. In
the Field of Reeds, the dead person was reunited with their body, and they
continued to live in much the same way as they had done before death, only
without pain, disease, hunger, or hard work. If the heart was found to be evil,
however, the soul was devoured by Ammit and destroyed forever, never to be
reunited with the body.
The ancient Egyptian fascination with the Tuat and the afterlife is manifest in the
hundreds of surviving funerary texts that describe the Tuat’s hazards, denizens,
and geographical features. Such texts also provided spells and other information
the soul of the dead person would need to navigate the dangers of the Tuat. At
first, funerary texts were written only in the tombs of the pharaohs, because it
was believed that only the pharaoh was able to go on to paradise and live
forever. Later, this privilege was accorded to the nobility, but eventually any
Egyptian person was thought to be eligible for resurrection and eternal life in the
Field of Reeds. This doctrinal change created a market for funerary texts, which
would be buried with the mummified body for the use of the dead person as they
made their way across the Tuat.
Funerary texts became available to anyone with the funds to purchase them
starting in the New Kingdom. Two of the most important texts were the Book of
the Dead and the Amduat . The latter is a lavishly illustrated book whose title
literally means “what is in the Underworld,” and it gives a detailed description of
the sun’s nighttime journey. The Book of the Dead , by contrast, is less a
description of the Underworld than a practical guide to how to get through it.
According to the Amduat , the Tuat was divided into twelve regions, with each
region representing one of the twelve hours of the night. Each region has its own
geographical features and is inhabited by its own set of deities, some of whom
temporarily join Ra’s crew in order to get his barge from one end of the region to
the other. One such deity who is aboard only through a particular region is called
the “Lady of the Boat”; her duty is to protect Ra and his barge while it is in her
territory. In addition to deities and various physical features, some regions also
have hazards that need to be negotiated. The solar barge itself undergoes
changes depending on where it happens to be at the moment. For example, the
mummified Ra is usually seated either in an open space in the middle of the boat
or else under a kind of tent, but at one point a friendly giant serpent comes
aboard and forms a new tent with its body to protect Ra on that part of his
journey.
Below are highly abbreviated descriptions of the twelve regions according to the
Amduat : [101]
1. In one illustration for this region, the sun god
stands in the middle of the barge in his ba -form
as a ram-headed man with a solar disk between
his horns; in another, he is shown as a scarab
beetle. Egyptologist Erik Hornung states that this
is intended to show that the sun’s journey is
expected to be completed successfully. [102] Nine
baboons in this region have the job of opening
the gates of the Tuat so that the solar barge can
go through, while another nine sing to Ra.
Because the sun is dead and has no light at this
point, there are magical serpents who provide
light in this region. Various other deities praise
the sun god, who asks permission to enter the
Tuat proper. Permission is granted, and the
baboons open the doors.
2. Still in his ram-headed form (which with one
exception he will keep until the end of the
journey), the sun god rides in his barge along a
stream. Several rowers propel the barge. Isis and
Nephthys are aboard in the form of serpents. Ra’s
boat is accompanied by several other barges at
this stage. One is the barge of the moon, another
is the barge of Hathor, a third is occupied by a
god in lizard form, and the last is the boat of
Neper, the god of grain, who is an avatar of
Osiris. Many other gods and goddesses are in this
region as well, who praise Ra and ask him to
renew himself. Ra replies with blessings for the
denizens of the region and a command that evil
beings be banished. He then asks for help in his
journey across the Tuat.
3. The barge is rowed along with ram-headed Ra
in the middle. As in the second region, there are
four other boats on the river with the solar barge.
The first is called “the boat that capsizes,” and it
carries Horus deities. The second and third boats
are called “the boat of rest” and “the boat of the
branch,” respectively. Each carries a mummified
Osiris. In addition to the main deity, each of
these subsidiary boats have a crew of other gods
and goddesses. Mummified forms of Osiris
appear elsewhere in the illustrations for this
region as well.
4. In the fourth region, water does not flow. The
barge instead has to be towed over sand, and it is
a different barge from the one in the first three
regions, having serpents’ heads at the prow and
stern. The fourth region is called the “region of
Sokar.” Sokar (or Seker) was the Memphite god
of the dead. Snakes slither over the sand here,
and instead of moving straight across the page,
the solar boat now takes a downward path, which
goes from the upper right corner to the lower left.
One part of the illustration shows two gods
guarding the Eye of Ra. In Wallace Budge’s
edition of the book, these gods are Thoth and
Horus. The winged sun disk appears in this
region as well, as does the goddess Maat.
5. Still in the region of Sokar, Ra’s boat
continues its descent, this time moving
diagonally downward from the upper left corner
to the lower right. The burial mound of Osiris is
here, watched over by Isis and Nephthys, who are
in bird-form as kites. Ra makes various addresses
to the beings who live in this region, asking that
he be allowed to pass through unmolested.
6. Ra switches to a barge that floats on the water
and is paddled by a crewman. Erik Hornung
states that this water is the water of Nun. [103]
There are four sets of mummified beings, and
each set represents the kings of a different
cardinal direction. The dead body of Ra is
represented by a recumbent man holding the
scarab of Khepera over his head, encircled by an
enormous serpent. According to Hornung, it is in
this region that the dead body of the sun is
conceptualized as the dead body of Osiris, which
here is reunited with its ba , represented by the
scarab.
7. The seventh region is called the “Hall of
Osiris.” Ra is once again depicted as a ram-
headed man with the solar disk between his
horns, but instead of the usual canopy, he is now
covered by an arch made by the giant serpent
Mehen. Mehen will continue to protect Ra in this
way until Ra is reborn as Khepera and rises as the
new sun. Isis stands in the prow with her arms
outstretched, using her magic to make the boat
move. The giant serpent Apophis is shown
having been defeated; his body is pierced by six
knives, while a goddess strangles him near his
head and a god ties up his tail. A form of Horus
also appears in this region, in the form of a seated
man with a hawk’s head, on which is the solar
disk to which a uraeus is attached. It is Horus’s
job to make the stars rise and to see to it that time
continues to flow. Twelve gods represent the
stars, while twelve goddesses represent the hours
of the day and night.
8. In this region, Mehen’s power gives the crew
towing the barge the ability to make progress
across the waters. There are four rams depicted
here, each with a different headdress. The rams
represent manifestations of Tatanen, the god of
the primordial mound from which creation arose.
Several other deities are depicted along with
looms and other things needed to weave cloth. Of
these representations of weaving, Erik Hornung
observes that “[t]he theme of this hour is thus the
supplying of clothes, which from early times on
represented a high priority among the things
wished for in the afterlife.” [104]
9. One section of the illustrations for this region
shows the twelve gods who row Ra’s barge. The
other job these gods have is to use their paddles
to splash water onto the riverbank for the use of
the spirits who dwell there. Ra also promises to
provide food and drink for the beings who live in
this region. Besides the crew of the barge, there
are twelve goddesses who sing praises to Osiris,
and twelve fire-breathing uraei who use their
power to protect Ra as he passes by.
10. Ra continues to stand under
the arch of Mehen’s body, but now he carries an
ankh in his right hand, while his left holds a staff
in the shape of a serpent. A series of illustrations
show four gods holding spears, four holding
arrows, and four holding bows. Ra bids these
gods destroy his enemies with their weapons. The
spirits of those who have drowned dwell in the
waters here; Ra promises that they can enter
paradise even though they haven’t been
mummified. It is in the tenth region that Ra and
Khepera are joined together in preparation for
sunrise. This is represented in part by an
illustration of a scarab beetle pushing an elliptical
shape that represents the horizon. Thoth, in his
baboon manifestation, holds the Eye of Horus so
that it can be healed by the goddess Sekhmet.
11. The text for this region
states that the deities who live here are guiding
the sun to the eastern horizon so that he can rise
again. Ra rides in his boat covered by Mehen, but
elsewhere in this section, Mehen appears as an
enormously long snake being carried along by
twelve gods who go on foot. Their job is to see to
it that Mehen also arrives safely at the eastern
horizon. A fourfold manifestation of the goddess
Neith is to be found here, as are a series of pits of
fire in which the enemies of Ra are consumed.
Each pit has its own attendant deity tending the
flames.
12. After a long and dangerous
journey, Ra’s solar barge finally arrives at the
eastern horizon. Ram-headed Ra stands in the
middle of the boat under his Mehen-canopy,
while Khepera occupies the prow in the form of a
scarab. One portion of the text in Budge’s
translation reads: “Then this great god taketh up
his position in the Eastern Horizon of heaven,
and Shu receiveth him, and he cometh into being
in the East.” [105] But before sunrise can happen,
Ra’s barge has to travel the length of a giant
serpent named Ankhneteru. For this part of the
journey, the barge is towed by twelve gods and
twelve goddesses. The goddesses towing the
barge also have the duty of creating breezes on
earth. Twelve additional goddesses carry fire-
breathing serpents on their shoulders. The
serpents use their fire to repel the enemies of Ra,
especially the demon serpent Apophis. Another
twelve gods sing praises to Ra. The final
illustration shows a curved wall at the rightmost
edge of the papyrus. This represents the horizon.
The god Khepera, in the form of a scarab beetle,
pushes the sun disk through the middle of the
wall. The disk is placed beneath the head of the
air god Shu, whose arms extend along the inner
perimeter of the wall. At the bottom of the wall is
a mummy representing Ra’s night body, which
he has cast off and which will be destroyed now
that he has been born again as the rising sun.
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Bibliography
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[1]
Samuel Noah Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient Worl d (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), 47.
[2]
Translation in Alexandre Piankoff, trans., and Natacha Rambova, ed., Mythological Papyri: Text s
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1957), 18.
[3]
Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient World , 124.
[4]
Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient World , 124.
[5]
James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature), 105.
[6]
Allen, Pyramid Texts , 158. Abydos refers to the ancient Egyptian city by that name, where a royal
necropolis was located. Bracketed insert is mine.
[7]
Allen, Pyramid Texts , 168.
[8]
Allen, Pyramid Text s, 195. Bracketed insert in the original.
[9]
George Hart, A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (London: Routledge, 2000), 37.
[10]
William Kelly Simpson, ed., The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions,
Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetr y (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 55. Bracketed
insertions are mine.
[11]
Hart, Dictionary , 38.
[12]
Kelly, Literature of Ancient Egypt , 279–80, 283.
[13]
Stephen Quirke, Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 137.
[14]
Margaret R. Bunson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, rev. ed. (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2002),
177.
[15]
Geraldine Pinch, A Handbook of Egyptian Mythology (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 115.
[16]
Pinch, Handboo k , 115.
[17]
Pinch, Handbook , 90.
[18]
Herodotus II:137; Henry Cary, trans., Herodotu s (London: George Bell and Sons, 1901), 150.
[19]
Herodotus II:137; Cary, trans., 150.
[20]
Herodotus II:137; Cary, trans. 150.
[21]
Lewis Spence, Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt (Boston: David D. Nickerson & Co., [1915]), 148.
[22]
Herodotus II:60; Cary, trans., 118.
[23]
Herodotus II:60; Cary, trans., 118.
[24]
Pat Remler, Egyptian Mythology A to Z , 3rd ed. (New York: Chelsea House, 2010), 30-31.
[25]
Ann Macy Roth, “Fingers, Stars, and the ‘Opening of the Mouth’: The Nature and Function of the n t
rwj -Blades,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 79 (1993): 60.
[26]
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings , Vol. 2: The New Kingdom
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 120.
[27]
A complete edition of the book as it exists in the tomb of Seti I is E. A. Wallace Budge, The Book of
Opening the Mouth: The Egyptian Texts With English Translations (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1909), 2 vols.
[28]
Budge, Opening the Mouth I, 12.
[29]
Pinch, Handbook , 137.
[30]
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings , Vol. 1: The Old and Middle
Kingdoms (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 205–09.
[31]
Carolyn Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt (London: Continuum, 2010),
17.
[32]
Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor , xi.
[33]
Margaret Bunson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyp t , rev. ed. (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2002),
160.
[34]
Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 1994), 83.
[35]
Mark Smith, Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017), 252, 417.
[36]
Stephen Quirke, Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2010), 69.
[37]
Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor , xi.
[38]
Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt , 37, 81.
[39]
See, for example, Hart, Dictionar y , 62.
[40]
A. Rosalie David, Discovering Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, 1994), 38.
[41]
Pinch, Handboo k , 143.
[42]
Pinch, Handbook , 144.
[43]
Lichtheim, Literature 1, 195
[44]
Lichtheim, Literature 1, 196. Hardedef was another wise man from the Old Kingdom who was deified.
[45]
Dietrich Wildung, Egyptian Saints: Deification in Pharaonic Egypt (New York: New York University
Press, 1977), 34.
[46]
Pinch, Handbook , 148
[47]
Marina Escolano-Poveda, “Imhotep: A Sage Between Fiction and Reality,” American Research Center
in Egypt website, accessed 23 June 2020, https://www.arce.org/resource/imhotep-sage-between-fiction-
and-reality.
[48]
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings , Vol. 3: The Late Period
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 62.
[49]
Normandi Ellis, Feasts of Light: Celebrations for the Seasons of Life Based on the Egyptian Goddess
Mysteries (Wheaton: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1999), 3.
[50]
Allen, Pyramid Text s , 4.
[51]
Allen, Pyramid Text s , 20, 35.
[52]
Susan Tower Hollis, Five Egyptian Goddesses: Their Possible Beginnings, Actions, and Relationships
in the Third Millennium BC E (n.c.: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), n.p. Accessed on Google Books,
http://www.google.com/books.
[53]
Hollis, Five Egyptian Goddesses , n.p.
[54]
Herwig Maehler, “Roman Poets on Egypt,” in Ancient Perspectives on Egyp t , ed. by Roger
Matthews and Cornelia Roemer (London: UCL Press, 2003), 205.
[55]
R. E. Witt, Isis in the Ancient Worl d (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 52.
[56]
Witt, Isis in the Ancient World , 52–53.
[57]
Vincent Arieh Tobin, “Isis and Demeter: Symbols of Divine Motherhood,” Journal of the American
Research Center in Egyp t 28 (1991): 187–8.
[58]
Tobin, “Isis and Demeter,” 188; Joshua J. Mark, “Isis,” Ancient History Encyclopedi a ,19 February
2016, https://www.ancient.eu/isis/.
[59]
Reprinted in Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourceboo k (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1987), 173.
[60]
Antonía Tripolitis, Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2002), 29.
[61]
Laurent Bricault, Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas , trans. Gil H.
Renberg (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 222.
[62]
Bricault , Isis Pelagia , 228.
[63]
de Traci Regula, The Mysteries of Isis: Her Worship and Magic k (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications,
2001); Ellis, Feasts of Light.
[64]
Lichtheim, Literature 3, 112–13.
[65]
Allen, Pyramid Texts , pp. 55, 68.
[66]
Pinch, Handbook , 155.
[67]
Pinch, Handbook , 155.
[68]
Pinch, Handboo k , 159.
[69]
Veronica Ions, Egyptian Mytholog y (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1990), 113.
[70]
Pinch, Handbook , 158.
[71]
Pinch, Handbook , 170.
[72]
Barbara Watterson, The Gods of Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1984), 176.
[73]
Ions, Egyptian Mythology , 126.
[74]
A. Rosalie David, The Ancient Egyptians: Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1982), 73.
[75]
E. A. Wallace Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrectio n , vol. 2 (London: P. L. Warner, [1911]),
4.
[76]
Budge, Egyptian Resurrectio n , 2, 4; see also Martyn Smith, Religion, Culture, and Sacred Spac e
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 53–4.
[77]
Smith, Religion, Culture, and Sacred Space , 54–55.
[78]
Herodotus II:63; Cary, trans., 119.
[79]
Translation in Smith, Religion, Culture, and Sacred Space , 53.
[80]
Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation (New York: Harper & Row, 1948), 28.
[81]
Ions, Egyptian Mythology , 108.
[82]
Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:18–20.
[83]
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religio n , third ed. Part IV, Vol. 11,
Adonis Attis Osiri s (London: The MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1914).
[84]
See, for example, Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the
Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 143.
[85]
Hart, Dictionary , 129.
[86]
Hart, Dictionary , 130-31.
[87]
Leonard H. Lesko, “Ancient Egyptian Cosmogonies and Cosmology,” in Religion in Ancient Egypt:
Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice , ed. by Byron E. Shafer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991),
115.
[88]
Lesko, “Cosmogonies and Cosmology,” 113.
[89]
Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt , 68.
[90]
C. W. King, trans. Plutarch’s Morals: Theosophical Essays (London: George Bell & Sons, 1889), 22–
23.
[91]
Ions, Egyptian Mythology , 122.
[92]
Cornelius Tacitus, The Works of Tacitus: The Oxford Translation, Revised , vol. 2: The History,
Germany, Agricola, and Dialogue on Orations (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1858),
[93]
Pinch, Handbook , 193.
[94]
Pinch, Handbook , 193.
[95]
Salima Ikram, “Protecting Pets and Cleaning Crocodiles: The Animal Mummy Project,” in Divine
Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egyp t , edited by Salima Ikram (Cairo: The American
University of Cairo Press, 2005), 219.
[96]
Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 121.
[97]
Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt , 121.
[98]
Watterson, Gods of Ancient Egypt , 122.
[99]
Ions, Egyptian Mythology , 28.
[100]
Ions, Egyptian Mythology , 29.
[101]
Synopsis based on E. A. Wallace Budge, The Egyptian Heaven and Hell , vol. 1: The Book Am-Tua t
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1905); Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of
the Afterlif e , trans. David Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 33–53; and Remler,
Egyptian Mythology A to Z , 9.
[102]
Hornung, Books of the Afterlife , 34.
[103]
Hornung, Books of the Afterlife , 37.
[104]
Hornung, Books of the Afterlife , 39.
[105]
Budge, Am-Tuat , 258.